Writing advice from the genius Ms. Roth!

The gorgeous and ever talented Ms. Veronica Roth a.k.a the writer of one of the most fetch books in history *cough* Divergent *cough* has given some tips on writing for some young writers out there!

Veronica Roth

Ms. Roth has put out a post on her blog with some tips!

First of all: I suspect some of you really mean to ask me for advice to writers generally, because a young writer is not some strange species of writer that can’t benefit from general writing advice, and fortunately I keep a blog full of my thoughts for writers generally, with a small database of posts about various topics. I will copy that database at the end of this post so you can poke around my blog if you feel like it.

And if you want advice about how to get published, you’ll have to frequently ask that question separately, my dears. (That is sort of a joke. You only have to ask once.)

Young writers! Guess what? I am one of you. Despite no longer being an adolescent, I am still 24, which is on the way low end of the writer age spectrum. I am not a source of great wisdom, because great wisdom develops over time, and quite frankly, I haven’t had a whole lot of that. But I’ll do my best.

When I was a teenager, I was in gifted/extended/whatever you want to call it English classes, which meant two things: 1. I had gotten external affirmation of my writing skills, so I was kind of arrogant, and 2. I was very defensive and insecure, because pretty much everyone in my classes was smarter than I was. (No, seriously.)

Maybe you are not like that, my young writer friends, but I know that at least some of you are, because I just do. It’s okay, don’t worry, I feel the utmost sympathy for your position! And I still like you. And in fact, it’s my intimate knowledge of your position (well, our mutual position) that leads me to give you the following advice:

Cultivate humility, patience, and courage.

Get Veronica’s full explanation of each tip, along with some handy links, here!