Goodreads asked Kevin Ansbro:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Kevin Ansbro By far the best advice I could give an aspiring writer is not to believe your own hype.
Once you have completed your first draft (and trust me, it WILL be your first draft), ask a friend - who would ideally be an avid book reader - to offer you a 'warts-and-all' critique of your work.
You really, really, REALLY do not want someone to blow smoke up your bottom at this stage. Accept constructive criticism as if you were Gollum being gifted the Ring.
My wife, Julie, is the first person I turn to for an honest appraisal and she doesn't take prisoners! : )
She cheerfully scribbles page after page of 'things that aren't quite right'; sentences that seem clumsy, dialogue that needs to be snappier. But I welcome, nay cherish, this. You would rather know these snags before a publishing editor sees them, or even worse, before the reading public spots them!
I recall Jeffrey Archer once saying that book writing is a marathon, rather than a sprint. I wholeheartedly agree!
Write, edit, rewrite, re-edit, rewrite (and repeat until polished).
And read great literature (not just Fifty Shades of something)! Learn from the greats. Trying to be a writer without first being a reader is like an explorer forgoing maps and a compass!
Happy writing!

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