Goodreads asked Jakob Melander:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Jakob Melander Two things: First of all read!! Read everything, the great russian novelist, thrashy science fiction, Proust, commercials, the text on serial boxes. Some day you'll discover that you can use all of it.
Then write! When I was a teenager, apart from dabbling in punk rock, playing rock'n roll and reading comic books plus all of the above mentioned, I was also drawing. A lot. This was in the late seventies/early eighties. At that time there was a very popular book, called To Draw is to See. In this book the writer said: Draw and sketch as much as you can, 'cause we all have a million bad drawings inside us. The thing is to draw them to get them out, so we can start drawing all the good ones! So even if you think your work sucks, you'll learn from it, and if you're persistent, eventually you will have written you share of bad work and get on with writing the good stuff.
Oh, and remember: Hemmingway supposedly said "The first draft of anything is shit!" I mean, if he could say that, you and I maybe shouldn't be too intimidated if our first drafts aren't spot on!

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