Probably the question I'm asked most frequently (aside from: Brianna! Whyyyyy???) is, "Do you have any tips for aspiring writers?" My answers have evolved over time, growing steadily more honest. I am pathologically incapable of giving a simple answer because I'm pathologically resistant to bullshit. And a lot of writing advice, especially the writing advice that is soothing and encouraging and affirming, is bullshit.

Just keep trying? Really? Even if you have no talent? Even if it means you chase a future you are never going to achieve and in the process lose out on a wonderful future more suited to your abilities? Shall I 'just keep trying' to get signed to the NBA? I mean, sure, I'm 62 years old, overweight and have zero athletic skill, but gosh darn-it, if I just keep at it. . . How about the space program? I'm out-of-shape and my math skills stop at long division, but sure, why not be an astronaut? How dare you suggest I abandon my dream of being an astronaut? Who the hell are you to harsh my mellow?

Look, writing for fun is a whole different thing than writing for a living. One is a hobby, the other is a career. You can have a hobby of watching House reruns and trying to guess the diagnosis, but that's not 4 years of college followed by three years of medical school followed by not sleeping for a couple of years while patients vomit, piss, crap and bleed on you. And then spending a lifetime looking in kid's ears and going, "Yep, it's an ear infection alrighty, my nine hundredth ear infection diagnosis. Since lunch."

According to the government the average writer/author earns around $66,000 a year, which is a pretty damned good if you live in Mississippi. If like me you live in the Bay Area it's almost enough to let you rent someone's couch to sleep on. And it's deceptive, because a 66k average can mean one writer earns a million dollars and a whole bunch of people make a single dollar. As the old saw goes, there are lies; there damned lies; and then, there are statistics. You know how you can get a $66,000 average? Add every single writer on planet earth to J.K. Rowling and divide by two.

If you seriously want to write for a living, not for fun, not to 'show all the doubters,' not to 'just get published,' but as a job, as a career, as a way to put food in your face, I do have some advice.

1) You are in a vendor relationship with your publisher. You produce manuscripts from which they produce books. If instead of a manuscript you were producing, say, car tires, you would understand that telling Ford to hold up the assembly line because you are a little blocked and not really 'feeling the whole tire thing,' would be really bad for your business.

If you sign a contract to deliver a manuscript of approximately 100k words on January 1, have 100k words ready to go, smoothed, cleaned-up and polished on January 1. Not January 2. January 1.

It's really good to be some transcendent literary genius, a towering talent whose name will be written across the sky in letters of fire. But also, shut the fuck up and get your work done. Don't be a baby. Your editor has a tight schedule and her assistant just quit and like you she also has kids and family and illness and a car that needs to go to the shop, so do not be a pain in her ass. If you're getting paid you are a professional, so act like it.

2) If like me you're in kidlit there are now three entirely different universes for book selling.

First is the bricks and mortar book store. Go to one. Look around. Do you notice how they have a bunch of shelves, but not an infinite number of shelves? A shelf is severely limited real estate. If you're really lucky you get a couple inches of shelf. If you're super lucky you get a couple of feet. And you hold that real estate only so long as you are selling and the minute you stop, poof! All gone book. Bye bye.

The other universe is Amazon. Their shelves are essentially infinity long, and your book, whether paper or pixels, can sit there forever. An infinite space, with infinite duration. Wow, man, just wow.

The third universe is schools and libraries.

Three very different universes, with purchases taking place in very different ways for differing reasons. This is your business, learn it.

3) Get an IP (intellectual property or publishing) lawyer. You presumably already know that you need a literary agent. Your agent will tell you to trust them. Don't. Unprepared, unprofessional and frankly corrupt agents have cost me at least a million dollars, and if I had not had a lawyer covering my back later on, I'd have been screwed all over again. Your agent works for you and ten other writers. Your agent needs to nurture a long-term relationship with the publisher. Your lawyer, on the other hand, works for you, follows your orders, and unless you hire a putz, is better at dealing with the subtle screw-jobs buried in supposedly 'boilerplate' contracts.

4) Know thyself Part 1. You are an employer with one employee: you. You need to get the best possible work out of you. Now, I'm not going to try and guess what's in your head or how your brain works, I'm just lucky to kinda sorta have my own figured out. This sounds a bit schizoid, but you have to figure out how to trick, manipulate and bully yourself into working. I use my overdeveloped sense of duty to anyone who pays me as my core motivator. Then I add a nice working environment, coffee, cigars and Adderall. And when I fall behind on paying taxes, that motivates me, too.

But it's more than that. There are days I know I'm not up for new pages, either because the rest of the manuscript is a mess, or I'm sleepy, or I only have an hour before my doctor's appointment. So I do rewrites. Job #1 is always first drafts because as Nora Roberts wisely points out, "You can fix anything but an empty page." Learn to understand yourself the way a smart, empathetic employer should. Know how to get the best out of yourself.

5) Know yourself Part 2: Before you start thinking about writing for a living, ask yourself: how good are you at self-discipline? How happy are you working in complete isolation? How do you deal with working on something for a full six months or longer, and in the end failing to sell it and thus earning no dollars per hour? And then doing it all again.

Do you want a regular wage? Benefits? Job security? A supportive environment? Be a librarian, they're good people. But don't be a writer. It's the best job ever, for me. But I'm me, and you probably aren't. Which, trust me, is a good thing for you.

6) Know yourself Part 3: do you want to be famous? As a writer? Ah hah hah hah! Good one. There may be as many as four kidlit authors who are recognized in public at all. Ever. If you want to be famous, learn how to sing insipid lyrics into Auto-tune and be super cute but not in a sexually threatening way. Writers are invisible, as we should be. We are skulking observers, not pop stars.

7) If you think this gig is about coming up with 'an idea,' sweetheart, I hate to tell you, but that's got just about fuck-all to do with the actual job. It's not about THE GREAT IDEA, it's about the ten thousand little moves you have to figure out to put that idea on the page. Here's a great idea: these two teenagers fall in love even though their families hate each other. You may know it as Romeo and Juliet, but the exact same premise has spawned thousands of books and pretty much zero percent of them touch Shakespeare's work.

It ain't the idea, it's the execution. Our most lucrative idea ever was, 'Kids turn into animals to fight aliens,' also known as Animorphs. Great idea. Great premise. And it took about five minutes to come up with. The 63 books that followed, took a wee bit more work. Someone else might have taken the exact idea (and they have) and had it not work. Then again, someone else might have won a National Book Award for it, who knows?

8) Do you want to use your book to grind some personal or ideological axe? Eh, you might sell a book or two. Better for the school and library market than either stores or Amazon. But earnest lessons and scolding and 'good for you' lectures have a limited appeal. All that personal stuff you want to get out? You sneak that in maybe, but that's not the book, that's subtext or the occasional easter egg. My personal favorite is still from Animorphs where we created a species of giant worm so obsessed with hunger that it would even turn to orgiastic cannibalism. We named that species Taxxons. And yes, we were doing our taxes at the time.

9) Once you start earning start saving, because it is up and down and sometimes just down. My wife and I have managed to make a decent living off nothing but writing for 27 years now. You know how many writers manage to keep their heads above water for that long without a rich spouse or a real job? Not a lot.

10) Finally, since for some reason we need ten bullet points: always have a next project. Have that next thing sort of simmering in your subconscious. But do not be tricked into a grass-is-greener game. The other book always seems as if it'll be easier than the one you're working on. It never is, and once you start down that path you're on the way to a hard drive full of abandoned manuscripts. And that, my friend, will not pay the bills. Start work at 'Chapter One.' Proceed till you can type the three little hashmarks at the end. You want to know what stops 90% of writers? They don't write, and if you don't write they will totally not pay you. Life is harsh that way.