Goodreads asked John Collee:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

John Collee Everyone can read and write, and almost everyone can tell a good story. What's hard to acquire is experience of the real world and the most valuable experiences - the ones that will motivate your writing - always involve an element of pain. Round-the-world yachtsman Jesse Martin once said to me "If you don't, at some point, wish that you weren't doing it, then its not a proper adventure." I believe that to be true, and I believe that as a novelist, your job is to have adventures.

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