Goodreads asked Salamanca:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Salamanca Besides writing, you have to read. You need to read the classics, and the books about writing. No, you don’t sit down and do it all at once. But you get a routine, where you can do a little at a time, and it motivates you to write, and it improves what you are working on. When I say read the classics, I mean read the classics you like. If you’re a guy, you need to read Treasure Island, and Kidnapped. Women should read all the Jane Austen books. Men should read them too, but my point is, these great writers will inspire you and show you tricks about author’s voice, and story, that you will pick up on. Books on writing- I can’t give you a complete list, because I’m reading them myself all the time. Here are just a few which I really liked: Curious Attractions by Debra Spark, On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner, Ernest Hemingway on Writing, Stephen King on Writing, How to Write a Novel by Nathan Bransford, Gotham Writer’s Workshop Writing Fiction, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamotte. Start there. That’s part one. Part two is someone actually has to sit their butt in a chair and write. That be you, bro. You need to write. I’m not saying you must write every day, you need to do so many pages day. What I’m saying is you should want to write every day, all day. And everything else should seem like an annoying interference to your writing. You should want to write and pour it all out when you are going good, so that food is an inconvenience. Giving yourself a number of pages to write becomes a chore. It’s not fun. Who wants to do that? After your first and second draft – be it an article or short story or novel, then, yes, maybe there is a bit of drudgery in clean up, and because you haven’t rested from it long enough to appreciate how good you are. So it is boring. So you do it. But when you are on fire, when you are hot, that is when you write most of your writing. And that’s my advice. Let the books teach you. And write while you’re hot. Allow yourself the time to do it. You will find that you are passionate about the writing and the creating process, and expressing what is coming through you too fast for you to type.

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