"Find where your audience buys their books and sell there."

"The only side you should fight on is the side of your audience. With weapons forged from the steel of Good Story."

"Free is not a price. Free is a promotional effort in which you offer a sample taste of your literary heroin in order to secure the addictive loyalty of new readers. Free is temporary. Do not price free in the long-term. If your book is always free, I assume that's its value: worth zero."

"An abandoned story at page one or page 356 has the same value as a story you never wrote in the first place."

"People Are Going To Steal Your Book: The current generation is used to open access, not restricted ownership. Someone is going to gank your book. They're gonna gank the unmerciful fuck out of it. And you're either going to be mad about it and flail or you're going to find a way to deal and, in a perfect world, make it work for you."

"Most readers just plain don't care who publishes someone, whether it's you, a Random Penguin, or some magic coyote hobo."

"Your stories are your world; they're what help you do this thing that you love."

"The thing to remember is all must be subservient to the content. Be generative. Create. All else is slave to that; your writing is not slave to anything."

"Sometimes even still you get that look, as if the person listening is thinking, oh, you're one of THOSE. Here's a radical notion, then: get shut of the term 'self-published.' Forget 'indie.' Forget 'DIY.' Just be an author when you're being an author. Just be a publisher when you're being a publisher. (Or, go with a term I quite like, 'author-publisher.') People ask you what you do, you write books. People ask who you're published with, give them the name of your one-man publishing company. Or say, 'I did that shit myself.'"

"Have multiple expressions of your awesomeness available at a variety of value tiers. Have something free. Have something out there for a buck or three. Make sure folks can sample your work and still support you should they choose to do so. Be like the drug dealer: first taste is cheap or free, baby."

"I've blocked a lot of self-published authors for this kind of behavior: you're not a sentient spam-bot. Quit with the auto-DMs. Don't sign people up for your bulk emails. Don't use social media to forcibly invite folks to some dubious online event based around your book. Your marketing efforts should be beautiful music that draws me nearer, not a hammer that clubs me where I stand."

"Nowadays, it pays to write a lot."

"If the magazine (print or electronic) charges money for folks to read the magazine, then that magazine better be paying you."

"The happy writer is an open writer: open to experiences, emotions, words, ideas, books, authors, tastes, smells, films, travel."

"You don't get sick days. A day you don't work is a day that accumulates nothing toward your needs. You're the hunter, now. You don't hunt? You don't eat."

"Piracy, good or bad, is not theft. It is perhaps a kind of parasitism? Combat it where you can, find value in it where you can't."

"Films are relatively short, and are comparable to long short stories or short novellas."

"It's time to stop asking for permission. Storytellers have been cast in a submissive role for a long time."

"Technologies come and go. The story remains constant. More to the point, our need for stories remain constant. Storytellers and writers aren't going anywhere. They may need to bend with the wind. They may need to find new ways to thrive. But they—we—will always have a place. The audience will be there."

"Creativity is what makes this whole human race not just function, but evolve."

"Short stories will teach you to write. It's that easy. Short fiction requires a heightened focus on sharp storytelling and crafty writing. A novel lets you get lazy. Short stories demand you to write in tip-top shape. You'll learn to say more with less."

"Deny anybody who wants you to work for free. If you work for free, that's something you do, not something someone asks of you—doubly true where they're making money and you're not."

"A novel is perhaps better seen as a season of serialized (not episodic) television."

"It is our job to ruin the perfection of the empty page. It is our job to disrupt the status quo: because that's what storytelling is. Taking a straight line and bending it, breaking it, shaping it into something far stranger and far greater. "

"Your body and brain are the Story-Engine. Keep them primed to write."

"Writing is winning. Always. It's not the only win condition: but it's always the first step."

"An ending says something about the story and the characters. It also says something about you the author."

"You can and perhaps should do both.  Novels and short stories combine together."

"What matters is the sense of reality, not the actual reality. That something feels real rather than how something is real."

"Have the courage to go forth and do not what everybody else is doing but what you want to do."

"At the end of the day, that's what keeps them reading: you giving the story (and by proxy, the reader) all you've got to give."

"You wanna be a better writer, you'll write outside your own proscribed margins."

"Put the "author" in 'authority.'"

"The storyteller is a puppetmaster. You're here to pull strings and make people feel something—often intensely, often deeply."

"You'll know if the ending works. You'll know because you're happy with it. It's that simple."

"Tone is the atmosphere you the author creates and mood is the atmosphere the audience feels."

"Diversify.  Do not rely on one revenue stream."

"Do not be constrained by the formats that exist. Story does not begin and end with a physical book." (artist)

"Storytelling and writing are two different things."

"Set challenges for yourself, then tackle them. ... Treat it like a game where the rules are ever-changing.

"Why not go big? Fuck the rules. Hell with the genres. Experiment. Play around with storytelling. Do something different instead of traipsing the same paths."

"Character matters more than anything else."

"Stop talking about writing and write.  Stop reading about writing and write."

"Every story is, in its tiny way, a horror story. Horror is about fear and tragedy, and whether or not one is capable of overcoming those things... It's an existential thing, a tragic thing, and somewhere in every story this dark heart beats."

"Your story is an argument—a thesis positing a thematic notion, an idea, a conceit. The ending is where you (purposefully or inadvertently) prove or disprove that thesis."

"A good story should always be raising questions—not asking them directly, but instead forcing the reader to ask them."

"You need to open with character awesomeness rather than event and explosions... action only matters when we give a rat's right foot about the characters involved."

"The writer's goal should be to get published, but the writer's love should be of writing.  Too many writers are in love with the idea of writing-to-be-published and too few are in love with the act of writing."

"I think books should be cheaper.  I want books to be accessible.  If books are precious (and as a result, expensive), then publishers win, readers lose, and by proxy, writers lose, too."

"Every day is a good day to write. Go and do that which you claim to be. Writers: write."

"The truth remains: writers write, but they must be prepared to do so much more."

"The same thing that gets readers through reading your book should be the same thing that gets the author... through writing the damn thing.  The reader must have sustained excitement.  And so too must the writer."

"Cut your heart out of your chest, clutch it in your fist, and slam it down onto the paper.  That is the real meaning of write what you know, which is probably written as, write with total fucking honesty.  Take all that shit that lurks inside you, all your fears and wants and experiences, all your neuroses and psychoses and loves and loathings, all your hopes and dreams and memories, and inject 'em into your work." (artist)

"Claim your life, own your existence. Write in spite of whatever conflict you face."

"Using clichés is basically plagiarism, except instead of stealing from a single writer you're borrowing from the collective consciousness supported by all language."

"Authors have told excellent stories based on subjects they cannot know."

"Let the love of your work be your primary reward."

"Writers must produce.  And produce.  And produce.  ABW: 'Always Be Writing.' ... One book a year?  Psssh.  No.  Focus only on novels?  Not likely.  Writers are no longer as free to work in a single sphere of writerly existence.  Get used to writing short, long, script, game, non-fiction, etc."

"What will elevate your work and make it your own is to live your life. Learn from your existence and borrow things from your day to day. Have adventures. Take risks. Put yourself into your fiction. Because life offers a kind of writing advice you just can't read about—it's something only you can experience."

"The term 'writer' is almost a misnomer. A carpenter must have a bevy of skills, and cannot succeed on a single one of them. You don't call a carpenter a 'sawman,' or a 'nailer,' or a 'screwdriver jockey.'  A writer must do more than merely write."

"The creative life is very much one where you need to put on blinders and charge forth regardless of what might be out there. You will always find reasons not to do something. It's much harder—and much more valuable—to find the opposite."

"Most so-called writers are dilettantes. They talk about writing. They feel what it's like to be a writer. They imagine the writer's struggle. And at the end of the day (or even at its start), they fail to put pen to paper or fingers to keys."

"Writing is a primal scream. It's yelling into a hole. It's the crystallization of your thoughts and fears. Writing cages your worry."

"Newsflash: nobody has the time to write a novel except established novelists. And even then you'd be surprised how easily life intrudes."

"You're aiming for satisfaction for the audience, not happiness for the characters. They may coincide. They may not."

"To really succeed at self-publishing it seems right now that your best bet is to paint with a shotgun; you're not served by posting one book and walking away but posting a book or project (or product, if you can stand that word) every couple of months."

"Writing is merely a conveyance for story—without story, without a message, writing is just a hollow bucket.  You need something to communicate, and story is that thing."

"Read and watch stories with a deeply critical eye."

"Always be telling your story, even when it's not your story."

"Life is too short not to take risks and too long to live with an output of weak-kneed, limp-noodled, utterly derivative, safe-as-houses storytelling."

"I like that the writer is a worker.  It means craftsmen, the producers, the truly capable, will survive.  Do work.  Live to fight another day."

"Find clarity in what you do.  Remove noise and zero in on pure signal. All that matters is what you do.  Put differently: don't care so much."

"On the worst day of writing, the work is instructive.  On the best day, the act is transcendent.  The work is purifying and perfect even when it's not."

"Writing advice is valuable. ...You don't have to listen to any or all of it, but you damn sure should be considering it. If you're not thinking and learning about this craft of yours, then quit now."

"If your response to stress is, 'Well, I'm going to hunker down and put out a little word count,' you've just trained your brain to basically turn straw into gold, or water into wine." (artist)

"Writing something means finishing something. End of story. I mean, literally. End of story."

"A story has many threads: character arcs, themes, ideas, plots, and so forth. A good ending ties up most of these. The best ending ties them all up."

"Your primary goal is to write a fucking whopper of a book. The lion's share of your efforts should go into that which makes you a writer: your writing."

"The only side you should fight on is the side of your audience. With weapons forged from the steel of Good Story."

"The audience should never know that—or, rather, should never feel that you're talking to them. They want to feel like they're witnessing something, that they're looking in a forbidden window. The audience doesn't want to feel told. Or lectured to."

"I am the Commander of these words. I am the King of this story. I am the God of this place. I am a writer, and I will finish the shit that I started. Amen." (artist)

"Most authors are [saying something big with their books]. Not all of them. But most. And I'd encourage you to be one of the ones who is."

"A chef doesn't just learn five dishes—a great chef learns new techniques and is always looking for a way to refine his form and sharpen the process. Writers must do the same."

"It’s just how most writers are, I suspect: we are the accumulation of words, and our life orbits those words (not vice versa)."

"The author writes to explain his world and the reader reads for the same purpose. We don't want to see our stories reflected back because we're like preening peacocks: we want answers. We want truth that relates to us, that speaks directly to who we are and what we want and all the things that block us from our path."

"If your story fails to have even the tiniest glimmer of fun in it, I must politely eject. Even the darkest and most nihilistic tales need that little starburst of fun or humor—not only to break up the darkness but also to serve as contrast to the darkness. The darkness is meaningless if we don't have any light for comparison."

"If you do care about having a go at this writing thing as a proper career, do not write for exposure. Exposure cannot be measured, and you might as well write for any number of invisible things: the dreams of sleeping kittens, perhaps, or mystical unicorn turds. You should always be getting something measurable for your writing."

"An author should never be afraid to let an ending offer new questions heaped upon the answers of the old."

"An abandoned story at page one or page 356 has the same value as a story you never wrote in the first place."

"Write what you want to write.  Write what you need to write.  Write what engages you, what interests you, what gets your blood pumping and your jaw tight.  Because what else are you going to do?  Platy it safe?  Write what everybody else is writing just because everybody else is writing it?  What's the point?  Why bring nothing new to the table?  Why fail to bring yourself and your passions to the page?"