Ten times ten by Keren David

Ten things I’ve learned in ten years of writing.

1)       The more you write, the less you read. 

2)      The fun of naming characters dies much earlier than you’d anticipated

3)      When writer friends succeed you feel their joy as if it were your own

4)      The internet is the enemy of creativity and concentration

5)      The best editor makes you feel as though their ideas are your ideas

6)      The best editing is done over a cup of tea, chatting about the characters as though they were real people.

7)      Just when you think that the whole game is pointless something will happen -  a reader’s email, an unexpected cheque, a shortlisting -  that makes you want to go on.

8)      The joy that can come from writing diminishes the more you rely on it to make a living.

9)     Writers make wonderful friends. 

10)   There is nothing so irritating as the writer who says ‘you’ when she means ‘I’.