Goodreads asked Sarah Armstrong:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Sarah Armstrong To read a lot. Reading broadly is the very best education for a writer. When you read something that doesn’t grab you, ask what the writer has done (or not done) to lose your interest. When something delights or grips you, consider how the writer has managed to do this.
The other important task for writers – even experienced ones – is to find a way to distance that inner writing critic that can be so debilitating, and stop a writer in their tracks. Freewriting (writing very fast without thinking about it too much and without stopping to correct or tidy up) is the best way I know to bypass the critic.
When I teach, I encourage students to accept that there will be many, many, many drafts. And to consider that rewriting can mean big changes – in structure or point of view or plot or character; it’s not just tidying up the grammar. Rewriting is asking: What is this story really about?

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