Thought for the day

I have been emailing with a friend who's been struggling with her work in progress. She was dismayed because, for the first time in her writing life, she'd had to chuck a solid beginning and start over. She worried about this change in her usual writing pattern, which reminded me of a quote I read somewhere that said

"Each book only teaches how to write that book."

A year ago April, I turned in a manuscript to my editor, a book I'd been working on for two years (think Dreaded Second Novel). Min...