Goodreads asked Kelly Flanagan:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Kelly Flanagan “Aspiring” is a tricky word. We need to be careful with it. On the one hand, it’s good to have goals, dreams, ambitions, plans. However, we can quickly sap all the joy from our writing if we saddle it with the kind of shame that says I’m not a real writer until I achieve this-or-that with my writing. I notice for most authors it’s a bestseller list we aspire to, often the New York Times Bestseller list. And that’s okay. Great goal! But it’s important to remember, in that case, we are an aspiring bestselling author, not an aspiring writer. Once you are in the habit of sitting down to write even on days when you don’t “feel like it,” that’s when you’ve ceased to be an aspiring writer and, quite simply and wonderfully, become a writer.

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