Take a look at Robert J Sawyer's "Eight Things New Writers Need To Know".

Not a response to my ever-evolving 10.5 Commandments post, but a list of things I really wish I'd been told 17 years ago, when I first set out on this crazy adventure.

Every word is gold. It amazes me, for instance, how often people forget numbers 6 and 8. (No one here is guilty of it, I'm sure!)

Thanks to the gang at the Writers of the Future Contest for e-printing this great piece from the contest anthology, Volume XXII.

Sometimes being a writer is more about reading than writing. Sometimes reading swamps writing entirely, a situation I find myself in at the moment.

I don't mean reading over my own work during the editing process; neither do I mean reading for review or research. During October, I'll be reading as a judge for the Aurealis Awards and the Writers of the Future Contest. I'm assessing grant applications (which includes scrutinising support material by the box-load) for Arts SA. I'm perusing submissions for the ever-expanding Big Book Club. And I'm looking at a galley from a friend in the States with a view to providing a blurb.

All of these things are important. All of them take time. There are days in the middle of writing a novel when I would kill for an afternoon reading a good book (aka falling asleep on the couch with a hardback plopped over my face). Seems all those wishes are coming true at once this month.

I'm not complaining. I'm actually looking forward to it. It counts as input, and I can't let myself nod off while reading this kind of stuff. Any one of these books or stories could inspire me in unknown ways. I might even read something that will change the way I think about fiction forever. It's possible. Isn't that why we let stories into our lives in the first place? To change and inspire us?

It's also a pleasant change of routine. Before I know it, I'll be back to doing what I normally do and wishing for moments like these. By anyone's standards, reading for a living looks very much like luxury.

I'm asked a lot for advice either from or on behalf of new writers. How to get started. How to succeed. That kind of stuff. I find this difficult because (a) there are no rules (despite there being plenty of opinions) and (b) usually I'm being asked in the context of an interview or an email exchange in which an exhaustive reply is neither expected nor, I suspect, wanted.

I have been pondering, therefore, a short answer to the question that covers every important issue in as brief a time as possible. The points below represent my attempts to do that.

I'm posting this here because I'd love to know how others approach this very question, and if ways exist to condense the answer even further.

Here's my list.

1. Read a lot.
2. Write a lot.
3. Write what you love but be aware of the market.
4. Define your version of success and take concrete steps towards achieving it.
5. Be professional at all stages of your career.
6. Listen to everyone.
7. Be visible.
8. Challenge yourself, always.
9. Never believe you've figured it out, because everything changes.
10. Work hard.

(Update: see the comments to this post for an expanded version of this list, as published in the SA Writers' Centre's Southern Write newsletter, December 2006. Or just click here)
(Update: a similar article has been published at Writers' World, here.)

That's still not a very short list, and it doesn't include anything explicit about community, which I think is very important--but I suppose that being visible and listening to people kinda assumes that you're interacting with someone.

I figure that if people are doing all or most of the things on this list then they're substantially increasing the likelihood that they'll achieve the goals they set out for themselves. Points 3 and 4 particularly relate to someone who wants to write for a living, but I think they're still important general points. The hardest thing, arguably, is not being published but working out what kind of writer you could be (there's likely to be several different answers to that question) then seeing whereabouts in the market you could fit. The last part is difficult, as the market is always changing, but you can't ignore the question or you could end up consistently barking up the wrong tree. Or a whole forest of wrong trees, until you stumble across a right one by chance--and who wants to leave something as important as this to chance?

The flipside of 4 is the awareness of what constitutes failure as well as success. When I started writing seriously, I gave myself ten years to have a book published. If I didn't make that deadline, I swore that I would give up and try something else. That gave me a sort of anti-deadline--something to strive against rather than for. I think that's important too. (Update: See Jay Lake's post here on the subject of quitting.)

Anyway, that's enough from me. I'd love to hear people's opinions on this. Save me from oversimplification and protect me from proselytising; whatever is required. :-)

(Update: also see Robert J Sawyer's "Eight Things New Writers Need To Know".)