Shit happens.

Things come at you every day—things you have no power to change.

You have two choices: you can get upset about them (react) or you can write about them (respond).

One of the most difficult things to learn when writing is to think like a reader, not like a writer.

This is one of the reasons many writers write by the seat of their pants, without structuring (or plotting) first. They write for discovery. It's so much fun to venture into the unknown and have epiphany moments when you figure things out and they just fall into place. It's addicting.

It's also dangerous. 

It's what I tell myself when it gets tough, when I'm so scared to move forward, I can't write down a single word and sit there, paralyzed, staring at the screen.

As soon as I recognize it's the fear that's stopping me, I tell my fear, "Hello, Fear. Nice of you to visit me again. How goes it?"

If you have no Hero, no Villain, and no Conflict, you have no story.

The words above are simply explaining that to have something worthy of retelling, you've got to have two people in conflict. The Hero can be anyone, picking one side of the argument. The Villain can also be anyone, picking another side of the argument. And they must pull in opposite directions.

The stronger the conflict, the more impossible the odds, and the more incompatible your characters, the better chance for your story to work and to be read.

Remember how when you were bored in class, you absentmindedly doodled in your notebook? Or maybe you gazed out the window and saw the shapes of clouds (giraffe! dragon! whale!). Or maybe you came up with a new brilliant jumping technique to beat those mean girls at recess in hopscotch? (My case. And I beat them, too.)

Or maybe you remember a dull summer day when it rained, and the school was out, and it was vacation time, but for some reason you had nothing to do and were bored out of your mind? And how after a while you came up with the most interesting, the most exciting project? (How to steal your brother's socks and fill them with toothpaste just to watch his face in the morning—you know, sweet sibling love...)