(What advice would you give to young writers?) We all have our very own ways to tell stories, and you will find yours. Honor your heart and your instincts; let your story come out first, and then revise it to make it sing! More than anything else, do what gives you joy.

(What advice do you give to younger writers?) Have a low overhead. Don’t live with anybody who doesn’t support your work. Very important. And read a lot. Don’t be afraid to read or of being influenced by what you read. You’re more influenced by the voice of childhood than you are by some poet you’re reading. The last piece of advice is to keep a paper and pencil in your pocket at all times, especially if you’re a poet. But even if you’re a prose writer, you have to write things down when they come to you, or you lose them, and they’re gone forever. Of course, most of them are stupid, so it doesn’t matter. But in case they’re the thing that solves the problem for the story or the poem or whatever, you’d better keep a pencil and a paper in your pocket.

I would give them (aspiring writers) the oldest advice in the craft: Read and write. Read a lot. Read new authors and established ones, read people whose work is in the same vein as yours and those whose genre is totally different. You've heard of chain-smokers. Writers, especially beginners, need to be chain-readers. And lastly, write every day. Write about things that get under your skin and keep you up at night.

My advice to a young writer: Never give up. Read everything you can read — particularly the writers who move you deeply. Study how they do what they do. Read and read and read ... and write and write and write.

Advice to young writers? Always the same advice: learn to trust our own judgment, learn inner independence, learn to trust that time will sort the good from the bad– including your own bad.

The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

Like most of us, emerging writers will only succeed through hard work and the humility to accept that they don't have all the answers. My advice is this: read, read, read. The artists who came before you worked really hard, paid their dues and solved problems as they went along. Some of them died never having received the honors they so merited. You have the benefit of their work. Study them. How did they create believable and compelling characters? How can you tell a story when your narrator is unreliable? How can the setting enhance the lives of the characters you have created? How do you choose which details to include and which to omit? How can you find fresh and evocative language? These are all important questions when writing your story. Don't try to reinvent the wheel when there is so much help out there if you only learn from those who took this journey before you. Instead, study them carefully, decide what you like and don't about every novel you read. And keep writing and keep reading. In the process you will find your own voice and, perhaps, become the next new literary genius.

(What advice do you have to give to budding writers?) Read, read, read. Read everything and pay attention. What works for you? What doesn't? Decide which writers you love and learn from what they put on paper. Equally important, find those you don't love and learn what not to do.

Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

(For any aspiring writers, is there a particular piece of advice that you would give to them?) The best advice you can give a writer is just write. There is no simple way.

Never hesitate to imitate another writer - every person learning a craft or an art needs models. Eventually you'll find your own voice and will shed the skin of the writer you imitated.

My advice to all writers is to spend the time you need learning to write a great story. Read widely and write every day. Don’t limit yourself to a certain kind of writing, and write what inspires you.

I would, first, advise them to start writing about what they know best (i.e. themselves, their immediate environments, feelings, etc.). Writers should also hone their craft by constant practice, producing many drafts, as haste is a detriment to a writer’s success. My last piece of advice is that, when they achieve success, they should not become arrogant; arrogance can incapacitate writers. Voltaire rightfully says that “the writer dies suffocating under bouquets of flowers.”

My advice to aspiring writers is to read more, write more, and network more. More, more, and more. Then, after you've done all that, do it some more.