My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.
Like most readers, I tend to skip the acknowledgements at the beginnings of books: the 'To-My-Wife-Without-Whose-Invaluable-Assistance' kind of thing.
You can't just skip the boring parts." "Of course I can skip the boring parts." "How do you know they're boring if you don't read them?" "I can tell." "Then you can't say you've read the whole play." "I think I can live a happy life, Meryl Lee, even if I don't read the boring parts of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." "Who knows?" she said. "Maybe you can't.
My mom, God rest her soul - she liked nicknames. In the womb she named me Skip. There was another black guy in Piedmont, W.Va., and his name was Skip. They called him Big Skip, and I was Little Skip.
I like exploring both the light parts and the dark parts of a single person. And all of those shades tend to come out most acutely in stories about families.
Skip the boring parts.
Try not to write the parts that people skip.
I'm a reader for lots of reasons. On the whole, I tend to hang out with readers, and I'm scared they wouldn't want to hang out with me if I stopped.
The problem with being a writer is that some readers tend to think that anything that comes out of a character's mouth is you talking.
'Throne of Glass' readers tend to be passionate, talented, clever, and welcoming - in fact, I'm consistently moved by just how welcoming 'TOG' readers are to new fans.
You've got to set yourself up to be as healthy as you can. The thing we tend to do is when it gets to be a bit too hard, we actually opt out for the absolute worst option. For example, if you're in a rush in a morning and you feel like you don't have time to make breakfast, you skip it.
You will not be able to stay home, brother./You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out./You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,/Skip out for beer during commercials,/Because the revolution will not be televised.
The pop musicians often leave meaning in the dust and substitute it for cartoons. The deeper artists - the grunge artists in the world and the emoticon people - tend to leave all of the happiness out of life like it just doesn't exist.
Readers soon tire of prefaces, and skip them, and so the labor of writing them is lost.
Defenders tend to leave me open on the elbow and when I step out, so it was only the smart thing to do to start to knock down the shots so they can't leave me open up there.