New writers, pay attention. I don’t know about you, but writing, rewriting, editing involves a lot of pain for me.

And then there’s the writer’s groups–without them I would never be about to publish–that rip your soul out in their criticisms and suggested changes. Every part I’m proudest of they recommended to delete. The words that brought tears to my eyes when I wrote them didn’t make the cut.

After all that, wait until the sensation of the first time you personally hear someone else stand up in front of a group and describe how good your new novel is. That’s your novel. You wrote it.

Great. Weird. You know every verb. Every comma, every problem you struggled with. Every paragraph that you could still improve with only 17 more rewrites. But it’s still great–just wait.

Then, it’s time to get the sequel done.