Dean Wesley Smith: Long Time Pro Tells it Like it Is

So…I’ve been hanging out some on GoodReads and came across a recently posted blog shared by Dean Wesley Smith who’s been writing for 40+ years.

He shared a video from a talk he gave at a book conference in Las Vegas.

Love, love, love this talk and worth the watch, however I’ll summarize what I got from watching this.

1. Sustainability – ask yourself…is what I’m doing sustainable? Can I see myself doing it for the next 5 years, 10 years…for the rest of my life?
2. Have fun with your writing! (every point from here on leads back to the point he made about sustainability. If it’s not fun, why in the heck would you want to keep doing it?)
3. NEVER “write to market” UNLESS it’s a market that you already truly love.
4. Defend your work!! Defend your art not only from others, but FROM YOURSELF!
5. Believe in your work! It simply reflects where you’re at as a writer at the point in time you wrote it. Nothing more, nothing less.
6. Dare to be “bad”. (no, cupcake…you don’t have a “career” to worry about “ruining”!)
7. Follow Heinlein’s rules which state:

• You must write!
• You must FINISH what you write
• You MUST NOT REWRITE
• You must PUT IT ON THE MARKET
• You must LEAVE IT on the market

8. NOBODY CARES!! – Write ANYTHING you want, however fast or slow you want…nobody cares…you have complete freedom to write what, how, when, etc. you want to write

9. CALM DOWN! – Don’t compare your success to others…only compare your ‘success’ to what you write. In other words, focus on getting better and better with each and every story. They’re your stories, so have fun writing them, write them how you want to write them, etc.

So…what do you think? Does this inspire you???