Other people have discovered wonderful things about the craft of writing. Take advantage of it! Learn from them with these 5 great books about writing.

Many of us feel like we have a novel waiting inside us. Very few of us finish the book.

As a novelist, I’m here to tell you: you can do it. You can write that novel that’s been knocking around inside your head for years.

But getting started is difficult. How do we even begin preparing to write a novel?

Here are my major tips for building up your confidence, skills, and idea before jumping into a novel. Do all this, and you’ll be ready to start (and finish!) your book.

A few weeks ago, I released my first self-published novel.

Overall, this was an incredible experience, and I’m really happy I took the dive. But since I was flying solo with little guidance, several parts of the process went excruciatingly wrong.

We got through it, and I’m happy with the result! But I figured I’d share what I wish I had known before I started, so you don’t have to deal with the same mistakes!

Before I started my shift from amateur to professional writer, I was frozen with fear. But I knew I loved to write, and that was the only thing I wanted to do with my life. Everything else felt wrong.

I had to improve. It felt like my very life depended on it.

If you love to write, and you want to get better, here are 9 simple things I did to improve, which you can easily do as well. These 9 steps took me from writing for fun to writing professionally. That doesn’t have to be your goal, but if you want to get better, here’s how you do it.