Lyss J asked Katherine Howe:

How did you know you wanted to be an author? Not just have the random inspirations and dreams to write a novel, but the actual turning point where you turned your dream into work, into reality? What advice would you give to a dreamer who constantly has inspirations and ideas, even complete sentences, for a book that may never exist?

Katherine Howe There are a lot of ways to answer that Alyssa. For me, a novelist friend overheard me musing that I wanted to do National Novel Writing Month, but I couldn't that year. And he said, well, if you have an idea for a novel, you don't have to write it in *that* month. You can write it in any month and take as long as you want. That very obvious point exploded a little firework over my head. It pointed out that I didn't need the universe's permission to do what I wanted.

As far as advice goes, I'm sorry to say that there is no special trick. Writing a novel requires sitting down and writing a little bit each day until it's done. Some people outline, some don't (I definitely do). Some people set aside blocks of time, some use word count assignments (I've done both). The challenge lies in working a little bit every day, and forsaking other things one might wish, or need, to do. It means writing instead of going to the movies one night, or instead of taking a hike one gorgeous afternoon, or instead of cleaning the house right this minute. But the cool part is, one day, after a whole lot of days like that, you type the last word of the first draft and you look around the cafe where you're working, and nobody around you knows what just happened. But it did.

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