Chuck Wendig

The writer is editor, marketer, blogger, reader, thinker, designer, publisher, public speaker, budget-maker, contract reader, trouble-shooter, coffee-hound, liver-pickler, shame-farmer, god, devil, gibbering protozoa.

Personal opinion time: some of the bravest, strangest, coolest stories right now are being told in the young adult space. It's stuff that doesn't fly by tropes or adhere to rules -- appropriate, perhaps, since young adults tend to flick cigarettes in the eyes of the rules and don't play by social norms as much as adults do.

Story should be a descent -- the feeling that there is an intense gravity to the narrative that draws you down, down, down.

Here are the two states in which you may exist: person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It__ as ludicrous as saying, __ aspire to pick up that piece of paper that fell on the floor._ Either pick it up or don__. I don__ want to hear about how your diaper__ full. Take it off or stop talking about it.

Question marks are shaped like hooks for a reason: they will hook the reader and drag them deeper into the story

You can__ be friends with a droid.

All hail the light, the dark, and the grey.

Failure is an instruction manual written in scar tissue.

We think the future is robots and hovercars and maybe it__ really here.

Leadership can mean defiance.

We__e here to change the world, not participate in its tedium.

Science is trumped by ignorance when the ignorant are given a vote.

The Empire must fall.

She treats herself as if she is a divine worm born of sand and stone.

Your best authorial self is always one about to ruin the story.

No, I just mean _ I__ not into _ this.___his?_ Her scowl deepens and her teeth bare. __lie

Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.

Where there__ smoke, there__ usually fire,_ Solo says before adding quietly, __sually an electrical fire near the hyperspace drive, which Chewie always warns me about_