Goodreads asked Caroline Allen:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Caroline Allen I believe if you're committed to your writing and you're working regularly, you will some day "make it". Just keep going. If you take two years off, don't beat yourself up. Take up the pen or the keyboard and just keep going. When I coach, I notice some writers will focus on this one book. If this book makes it, I'm a success. If it doesn't, I'm a failure. You're a writer for life. That one book doesn't have the power to make or break you, unless you give it that power. Just keep writing! Go to workshops. Read. Make writing your life-long commitment, and you will be successful, whether it takes five years or ten or twenty. I gave up journalism, where I'd seen my writing published, and my byline on stories over a period of a decade. After this, I became a fiction writer and assumed it would take five years to get my first novel published. It took twenty years! And I've never regretted a moment of the entire path.

flag