Best Writing Advice Ever: Make Mistakes by Andrea Perry

  Do any of these sound familiar?



Write everyday.
 Write what you know.
Write the book you want to read.
 Just start.
Give yourself permission to write badly.
 Cut.
The first 12 years are the worst.
 Never open a book with weather.
If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools- to write.
 Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.
All you have to do is start writing, finish writing, and make sure it's good.


I am sure we could all add to this list. But the best advice I've heard in quite a while I read in Neil Gaiman's 2012 Commencement Address at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia:

"...I hope you'll make mistakes. If you're making mistakes, it means you're out there doing something.  And the mistakes in themselves can be useful. I once misspelled Caroline, in a letter, transposing the A and the O, and I thought, " Coraline looks like a real name..."
"And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes.  Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being there.  Make good art."