Greg responds...

Hey Amanda,

I began writing stories as early as Second Grade. It's a great hobby, and it can be a great profession -- but I'd only recommend it to someone who truly felt they couldn't be happy doing anything else. Because there will be REJECTION. Nature of the beast, I'm afraid. But if you want to do it, then do it. My first and biggest recommendation is to learn to PROOFREAD your work. Get a dictionary and look up words that you're not sure of. Make sure your grammar is impeccable. No one will want to read your work if it's loaded with typos and other small errors. They'll never get to see your wonderful stories. My next recommendation is to READ. READ, READ, READ. Read voraciously. Newspapers, magazines, classic works of literature, comic books, whatever. But read. My next recommendation is to LISTEN. Listen to how people talk, how they sound, their dialects, their slang, etc. That's the way to learn to write good dialogue. Finally WRITE, WRITE, WRITE. PROOFREAD. REWRITE. READ. READ. Etc.

Good luck.