Dan Alatorre

Pound it out, get it done, write every day. No excuses. Kerouac said you can__ wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club. Damn straight. You__l sleep a lot better getting your word count in than another quick Twitter check or keeping up to date on the Kardashians.

You have to put yourself out there as a writer, you can__ play it safe.

Believe in yourself and start achieving your dream. It waits for you on the other side of the publish button.

I take the rawest, realest moments in anyone__ life and I open them up and lay them bare. The innocence of a five year old child, the awkwardness of a teenager__ first sexual encounter, the heartbreak of longing for a relationship you can__ have, confronting the possibility of the death of your newborn child, whatever it is, you open your soul and put it out there and dare the world to read it, ready to have them stomp on you and laugh, but ready to do it again the next day. You have to put yourself out there as a writer, you can__ play it safe. Great writing isn__ safe.

Honesty makes stories real and characters memorable. From there, taking them to where they need to go will be all the development they need.

People are suckers for the truth and they know it when they see it. Open your soul and they will stop and watch.

On working with other writers: You develop honesty and you can then ask the really embarrassing questions. I have learned so many things I didn__ want to know, and they were all a result of interesting interviews for background information.

Dig deep and go where the pain and fear and joy are, and put it out there. The minute you shy away from pure honesty in your writing, you become a liar.

My characters still talk the way normal people talk. They argue, they are sarcastic with each other, they joke around. I usually end up with one outrageous minor character in each book that people just rave about. We all have that one friend who says and does things that are a riot. A character like that is the salt in the soup: you want just enough to bring everything to life.

Don__ polish it forever, put it out there. At some point the changes aren__ improvements, they__e just changes.

Writers get ideas all day every day. The FedEx guy delivers a package from Sears and the writer is thinking how it could actually be a ticking time bomb.

Here__ my advice: you hold in your heart everything you need to know to write anything your story needs written. Dig deep and go where the pain and fear and joy are, and put it out there. The minute you shy away from pure honesty in your writing, you become a liar and people will smell it. People are suckers for the truth and they know it when they see it. Open your soul and they will stop and watch.

You need an interesting voice. A grabber opening is great, compelling characters are awesome, but the voice _ your unique voice _ is what carries your story. Find your voice. Own your voice. Learn to tell interesting stories using your unique voice. That is the key.

Don't have every dialog go in a straight line to solve the problem. Let your characters argue, be sarcastic, disagree or joke around.

I usually end have one outrageous minor character. He or she says the stuff I wish I had said in real life. Readers will love that character.

Don__ listen to any advice from anybody who has fewer published bestsellers than you, or anybody with more bestsellers than you. Or anybody with the exact same number of bestsellers as you. Don__ listen to any advice at all, even this advice I__ telling you right now.

What I can tell you is DO IT. Publish book one and get book two out as soon as possible. There are very few Harper Lee__. Most of us are going to have to write a few books to get good at it.

The more time you can put between you and your manuscript, the more fresh your eyes become and the more mistakes you__l catch.