Goodreads asked Michael Pronko:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Michael Pronko The how-to guidebooks lay it all out real nice and clear. I read as many of those books as I could get my hands on, and still do, as a kind of therapy and tune-up. They all pretty much say the same thing: write every day, develop strong habits, ask for help, don’t be too proud to accept help, get super-organized. Take all the writing chances you can get. If writing opportunities don’t come to you, go to them. The 10,000-hour rule for mastering basic skill in any art, craft or area of knowledge, I think, holds true. Spend those hours. Breaking writing into small, doable chunks helps immensely, but also developing a sense of where you are in the overall process. You’re always basically lost, but you have to kid yourself you know where you are just to keep going. Keep a notebook at hand always to jot things down. I stop in the middle of a rush hour train station if I need to, which are very crowded in Tokyo, just to write stuff down fresh.

flag