Writing for yourself is a wonderful way to save money on therapy bills. I kept a journal for about ten years as a teen and young adult. It was very deep. Okay, 99 percent of it was about boys. But it’s interesting to look back on now, and helped me sort out my angst at the time.

Writing stuff for your friends is cool too. When I worked at the bankruptcy court, I liked to write funny articles for the newsletter, poems honoring people who were retiring, and skits for our annual holiday party. It was just fun. Now I like to send my friends a funny holiday letter every year, keep a blog, and post a lot on websites and e-mail lists.

But this article is about writing for publication. So here’s what works for me, anyway:

1. Get your butt in that chair. I love to think about my novel. It’s a thrill to complete a novel. It’s the actual writing of it that I don’t like so much. Put it this way: It never gets to the level of a day at Disneyland (unless we’re talking about a humid day on a holiday weekend in the summer). Most times it feels a notch above cleaning the kitchen. But to get to that completed novel stage, you have to write the thing. Write every day, or almost every day, whether the spirit hits you or not. Sit down and do it. Just a half-hour to an hour a day should give you a completed young adult novel within a year.

2. You don’t have to know every bit of the plot before you write. I like to know a little about the main character, what he wants, what stands in his way, and whether he’ll get what he wants. In other words, I know the beginning and end, but have no clue about the middle. You can kind of plot it as you write. And rewrite. And rewrite. Sigh. If only I could be an author without actually writing a book.

3. Take a writing class or join a critique group. Knowing that I had to read 8 pages of my stuff every other week motivated me to keep writing.

4. Actually listen to your critique group. You don’t have to do everything they say, but don’t let your ego be so big or your psyche so sensitive that you won’t revise your work according to their suggestions. Hint: you can name your antagonists after any mean people in your group.

5. Finish your book already. I’ve seen too many people with a bunch of half-completed manuscripts. It’s really, really hard to write an entire book. I hate being in the middle of one and trying to figure out where to go. And rewrites are a huge pain in the neck. But if you want to get published, you have to learn how to see a novel through from beginning draft to polished final product.

6. Getting published is not about who you know or what the hot trends are. It’s about writing a great book. (I mean, unless you’re Madonna.) Until you’ve crafted the best work you can, don’t even think about agents, or publishers, or whether Toby Maguire is too short to play your main character on screen. (Okay, I’ve thought about it. Shia LaBeouf is Storky, and one of the Olsen twins is Gina. But it’s not like I called their publicists to see if they’re available. Not lately, anyway.)

7. Never give up. I revised Storky approximately 4.6 zillion times—including after it got me a wonderful agent, after it won the San Diego Book Award, and after it went to the editorial board at a big publisher. I collected lots of rejections, including nasty, name-calling letters, impersonal forms, and a heartbreakingly close call. But I used those rejections to make my book stronger and stronger, until it finally sold. And– this sounds so soppy and clichéd, but it’s true– now I couldn’t imagine a better publisher for my book than Putnam.