Goodreads asked Michael Anderle:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Michael Anderle I help a few people who want to push out their books in a small Facebook group.

So far, 2 have produced books and one is working on her first.

My personal belief is that the MARKET will tell you if you have something so:

Hack the writing process. There is no need to find out if you have a good character. You could do what I did - write 200k words and 3 books to see if anything is happening (my big break was book 4).

OR

You could hack the process and do what we are testing in my FB group - Short stories to get your craft together and push your publishing knowledge forward.

There is NOTHING like having your book out to focus your mind.

Want to know if you have something? Write just 5 pages and share it with me.

I worked with beta reader who helped me. He pitched his first idea and while he messed with it, the story never resonated with me. He casually said he had another 'idea' of an engineer in the future who get's lost in a large battle and left behind for 15 years with all of the derelict ships... I told him that sounded cool.

He delivered the first couple of chapters to me and my response was "This is the SH#T!!!"

He hit #1 (and is still there as of tonight) in short stories for his Niche. He is pulling together his stuff and is putting together a compilation after he puts out #4.

Would he have done as well with his original story? I couldn't tell you. However, as an avid reader, I knew what spoke to me personally. He's a huge reader, he has a great way of writing.

I'm a big fan of pushing something out. Short stories provide a great opportunity and if you're concerned with putting out ... bad stuff ... then use a pen name.

Consider a fan-fiction site if you don't want to push out to Amazon right away, but DO SOMETHING!

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