My advice is simple:  just write.  Sit down every day and plow ahead, with whatever word count goal you choose.  And as you write, don’t think about the fact that you’ve never written anything longer than a twenty page paper and that was for a class you hated in college.  Today, even if what you put on the page is terrible, no-good, the worst chapter ever inflicted on a word processing program, believe that through editing, educating yourself, and reading what other people write and say about writing, you can learn and improve.  You can get better day by day—until one day you read over the two pages you managed to write the day before and think to yourself, ‘hey, that’s pretty good!’ Don’t think about publishing.  It isn’t that a first or second book couldn’t be published, but that Read more…