I’ve been thinking about this—my first post on writing—for some time now. There are many areas I could have focused on: point of view, scene definition, character development, . . . Or I could have discussed writing tools: text editors, outliners, grammar checkers, . . . And then there’s the tsunami of information surrounding publication and marketing. Whoo!

So I asked myself: What’s most important to me? What’s the one thing that makes or breaks everything else for me as a fantasy book writer?...