Goodreads asked Heather Tosteson:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Heather Tosteson Along with being a writer, I am a publisher and one of the first questions I ask aspiring writers, young or old, is "Which of your works was so important to you to create that you would have written it even if there was no possibility of getting it published?" The reason for this questions is that our relationship with our writing needs to begin with ourselves as our first, and sufficient, audience. Writing is time consuming, energy consuming, and the writing life is filled with rejections, so you need to know there is going to be one person who will be deeply fulfilled and changed by what you write. However, my next question is, "Who would you like to enter into conversation with through this book? What kind of conversation do you want to have?" When we write, we explore and reorder our own experience. People who like our stories often like them because they shape something that has been troubling for them. So my question really is, What did you learn from your writing that allows you to generously and attentively hold whatever your readers bring to you in response?

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