Goodreads asked Ursula Werner:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Ursula Werner I'm one of those people who always wanted to write but didn't feel like I could make a living doing so, so I pursued an alternate career (law) instead. Fortunately for me, my creative writing instinct -- or bug, or muse, or whatever it is -- became restless with the constraints of legal writing, and I finally had to give it time and space. I suppose my advice is, if you have a similar creative instinct, to allow it to express itself. And that can happen whenever your life is in a place that makes it possible. It may be that you can start writing as early as your teens or twenties. It may be that you won't really have that time and space until later in life.

When I left my legal job at the Department of Justice, one of my colleagues, who knew I wanted to pursue my creative writing, asked me, "Well, you know the worst thing that can happen?" I thought he was going to answer that the worst thing that could happen, if I tried to write, was that I might not get published. That I would write and write and it would never be seen in print. Instead, he said, "The worst thing that can happen is that you're not happy with what you've written." I think that was one of the most profound pieces of advice I've been given, because it reminded me that the most important thing about writing is my own response to my craft. I have to write because I enjoy the process, because the job of writing gives me satisfaction and pleasure, not because I want to see my name on the spine of a book.

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