Goodreads asked L.A. Little:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

L.A. Little Read a lot and write a lot. That's pretty much the only way to move forward. Don't let reading, studying, or other "preparation" keep you from writing though. Set a daily goal that you can consistently meet and then do it. Some people use a time measurement or number of pages. I use word count. I'm very busy aside from writing, but I know I can do 400 words per day and I almost always do. Also, take breaks from writing. You can burn out like with any other job. I used to look forward to writing while on vacation and so I created this paradigm where I was battling the clock to do as much as possible before my vacation was over. That's not relaxing. Now when I'm on vacation, I'm on vacation from everything and it's awesome. I also take a few days to a couple of weeks off after every project I complete so I can cleanse my creative palette before I dive into the next one. I probably only write about nine to ten months out of the year, but in that time I'm intensely productive, writing 80,000 words or more on average. Hopefully more of that will be fiction going forward.

flag