10 Things I Wish I Had Known by DiAnn Mills

1. Research doesn’t mean a jaunt to the library or sailing through cyberspace. It means a trip into your characters’ lives.

2. Some critics are like boo birds that sit on their lofty power lines and crap (mess) on those beneath them.

3. When I grow up, I will know the difference between lie and lay and sit and set. Until then, my characters will rest and stand.

4. All my characters are blind because I don’t really know them until they crawl into the shower and start speaking to me.

5. True success is a hundred pages without an adverb.

6. Emotional pain knocks at the writer’s heart and bleeds onto the written page.

7. Do you know how a writer and a flock of geese are alike? They both have a higher calling.

8. A good writer knows all the weirdoes in his family are a compilation of himself.

9. A good writer knows that cutting the flab adds muscle and reduces the fat in his manuscript.

10. A writer’s tools are his words — add to them daily, memorize their meanings, and learn to spell them like a first place kid in a spelling bee.