If you’re selling apples and they want pears, it doesn’t make your apple any less an apple; it’s just that they want pears.

How many times as a writer have you gotten so caught up in the next step of the writing process that you lose sight of the real finish-line: getting to the end? Are you suffering from a case of go-back-and-gix-it, or worse, page-perfectionitis? Stop worrying about editing or finding the perfect word, and just get to the end.

The creative process just isn’t neat, no matter how you approach it. Writers tend to write amidst stacks of paper and books. Artists tend to create with speckles of paint on their clothes and the floor. Their work environments mirror the exploratory states of their mind as they search the pathways of their imaginations. Without chaos, there is no creation. Just look at a kitchen after a feast.

Anyone who has ever written “The End” on a manuscript knows that, sometimes, inspiration eludes us. No one looks forward to those lulls in the writing process, but they are natural, and they can be overcome. These are the times when we must proceed on willpower and caffeine and the unflappable confidence that each word we write is one word closer to a finished novel. I can promise that, tough as those times may be, they often lead to some of our most proud and beautiful writing moments.

Get into the scene late, get out of the scene early.

As a writer, you can’t allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.

Perfection is an unattainable goal. It isn’t going to be perfect. Just get words down on paper, and when you stumble to what you think is the end of the book, you will have hundreds of pages of words that came out of your head. It may not be perfect, but it looks like a book.