Andy Weir

It's not enough to just think about exactly the history of why the King's Royal Guard wears their buttons on the left and or whatever else.

It's fun to do world building, but that's not writing.

You have to be like putting words onto paper or into your word processor or whatever your process is.

You have to write.

And that seems obvious, but it's hard work.

Once you start writing is when you realize all the problems.

And so you got to fix them.

That's number one.

Number two is very difficult.

Resist the urge to tell your friends and family your story.

Most of us, me certainly, are driven by a desire for other people to experience the story.

If you tell your story to your friends and family, which can also be difficult when they are explicitly interested in asking you, oh, tell me more, tell me more, that sounds cool.

Then it satisfies your need for an audience and it saps your will to actually write it.

So the best way to combat that is to make a rule for yourself saying like, no one can experience this story in any way other than reading it.

And so I've got to write it.

So you can still give it to your friends like a chapter at a time so you can get that incremental validation that you crave, but don't just verbally tell them the idea.

And third and finally, we are in a wonderfully unique time period here.

There has never been a better time in human history to self-publish.

I definitely recommend trying to get a traditional publishing deal because traditional publishers have these publicity and marketing departments that you cannot possibly do anywhere near as well as on your own.

But if you can't get a traditional publishing deal, self-publish.