Goodreads asked Rachel E. Pollock:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Rachel E. Pollock It may sound like a smart-ass answer, but my best advice is, write. Write a lot. It doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be something you want to publish, but words on the page/screen have to exist. You can always go back and revise, rewrite, or even delete them, but you have to write in the first place. I write, no lie, every day of my life. Sometimes i work on a novel or a short story or an essay, but sometimes i just bitch in a journal or transcribe a dream. It's not always what you write that's important--it's the practice of translating thought into word and sentence and paragraph.

And my second piece of advice is, read. The more you read, the better writer you'll be. Read for pleasure, sure, but also read for inspiration, for tips and tricks and ideas. Notice when a book is a total page-turner--how did the author structure it such that you're borne along so compellingly? Pay attention to good dialogue (and bad dialogue), fantastic or florid vocabulary, beautifully well-crafted sentences or totally lame and predictable plot-twists. When i'm reading a book and a writer really pulls off something amazing with the language or the plot or the character development, i mentally high-five them, but i also make a note to come back to it, think about it at length in terms of how they crafted that successful moment of a story or essay. The more you read, the more you know, and that's never a bad thing (even when it's a bad thing).

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