Goodreads asked Matt Burriesci:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Matt Burriesci Write. Write a bunch of crap. Write everyday. But that advice isn't for everyone. People are different. They come at it differently. I wish I was the kind of writer who could just set it down for a while and come back to it like I never stopped. But I'm not. I know people who do that who are much better writers than I am. Jerks! For me, if I don't write for a while I find I have to sort of "get back into shape," before it starts working again. If I'm working on something, I'm working on it every day. If I let too much time go between chapters than I lose the spark, the voice, all that stuff. I think Poe said something about that--unity of effect and all that. I lose the consistency of the style, so it fails to work on the page and with the reader. Sometimes I write "placeholder" chapters where I know it's really bad, but I have to get to this other part I want to write. Actually, I've written a lot of books nobody will ever read because they're just terrible. They're like placeholders, too, only for new projects. I know they're terrible. I had some idea and it was either a bad idea, or it was a good idea and I just wasn't good enough for it. But usually I pick up a trick in the process, or some line, or a character idea. It's always worthwhile as an exercise. Really, 99% of what I write is junk. Every so often you hit that jag, and you can feel it. It was better on typewriters, actually, or on those old manual computer keyboards with the switches under each key. You knew when it was working because you could actually HEAR it, and you could feel the rhythm of it, the CLAK CLAK CLAK of it, and it's almost like you could go on autopilot for a while and follow that. It makes sense, actually. When you're varying up your word length and your sentence structure it sounds a certain way when you type it. When it's not working it all sounds monotone. Jesus that sounds like the advice Sean Connery gives in that terrible movie Finding Forester. "Strike the keys! You're the man now, dog!" God I hate that movie. Cloying garbage. That's what I got for you! More cloying garbage. If you wanna be a writer, then write. If you wanted to be a basketball player, you'd play basketball, wouldn't you? Also: spend the money and buy a decent printer.

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