Rahadyan asked Christopher L. Bennett:

If you could advise a younger self, the one that had just set out to be a professional writer, what would you tell him?

Christopher L. Bennett Well, there's always the perennial answer, get a steadier job to supplement the writing income, and take better care of your savings. Submit stories more diligently and don't give up on them. Trust what editors tell you. Try harder to get an agent. Diversify; don't get too dependent on a single source of steady work.

There's also the advice I got from Robert Hewitt Wolfe the one time I pitched to STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, which he was probably passing on from Michael Piller: Always work from the perspective of character. Don't just focus on plot and cool ideas; ask what a story means to the characters, how it changes them or reveals them. That's probably the best single piece of advice I ever got.

Beyond that, I'm not sure how much good advice I'd have to offer my younger self, since there's a lot I still haven't quite figured out or that I'm struggling to do better at.

flag