Goodreads asked L.G. Cunningham:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

L.G. Cunningham 1) Know your audience - you need who your book is going to be aimed at before you write one word. Once you have identified what category you're writing for and the age group of that category, my advice would be to research by reading the top sellers in your category of choice. Writing style, book length, cover art etc. should all be influenced by what is currently there (but don't be afraid to be different either).

2) Take an online writing course - I didn't study literature or journalism in university. I actually studied accounting! So I had to look up courses online to teach myself about the craft. I found the Masterclass courses to be very helpful and there are plenty of ones there on writing. Find one that works for you!

3) Plan - I found it so much easier to plan every chapter, the beginning, ending, character outlines before I started my first draft. That way, I knew exactly where I was going with the novel and could enjoy where my writing took me each chapter. When I say plan every chapter I mean plan the central theme / objective of the chapter.

4) WRITE! - I held myself accountable to 2k words per week which was just about doable given the fact I work full-time. I didn't care how bad these 2k words were once I reached my weekly goal. Before I knew it, I had a 30k first draft done. However, the real writing started on my second draft so don't get too downhearted if you feel like you're writing pure garbage initially.

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