Tip O'Day for Writers #62

Guest blogger Bob Weinberg says there are three steps to becoming published: Read constantly, learn from what you read, and write constantly.

You need to read all sorts of material, but especially the type of story you want to write. You need to be familiar with the structure of the stories you plan to create, know the vocabulary, and know your rules of punctuation.

You need to learn from what you read. A good writer learns from every book he or she reads. I still find myself noticing interesting sentence structure or wordplay by other writers, and that's after 35 books.

You need to read, to learn, and then to write and write and write. Plus, after you write you must submit what you have written and keep on submitting. The secret of most published writers is that they are determined to sell what they have written. So you need to write and submit constantly. If you continue to learn and continue to submit, you will sooner or later start selling. Simple as that. A good writer is a determined writer.

Bob Weinberg is the author of 17 novels, 2 short story collections and 16 non-fiction books. And editor of over 150 anthologies.

I originally posted this on May 12th but it somehow vanished overnight. Don't understand how this could happen; however, here it is once more.