If it stuns you, it'll stun your reader.

If it moves you, it'll move your reader.

If it makes you forget about time, it'll make your reader forget about time.

So write something stunning, something moving, something that makes you forget about time and space and all your problems. Something that sucks you in completely and doesn't let you go until you finish.

Trust yourself.

Don't force it.

When stuck or unsure or lost, close everything (your laptop, your notebook, your skull with your pulsing, jittering brain) and WALK AWAY INTO SILENCE.

Whatever time you have planned for writing, fill it up with doing nothing.

Since I started working with my writing partner, the difference in the quality of the material I’m putting out has soared. And it’s not because I somehow got better overnight. 

It’s because when you have another brain joined in thinking through your story, you see things you haven’t seen before. 

When writing about particularly sensitive topics (trauma, child abuse, suicide, war, rape, racism, sexism, any kind of phobia, any political issues, etc.), make it palatable for the reader. 

How? Wrap it up in a metaphor. 

Or outer. Or through-er. Wherever your child resides, remember to nurture it.

We’re all still children. And most of the time we conveniently forget about it and try living like adults, forgetting to enjoy life in the moment, to wonder, to stare at the clouds.

To simply be.

If you structure your life to death—and if you structure your writing to death—the child within you will rebel.