What advice might you offer writers eager to embark on their first novel? Find something you really feel a passion about writing, and then do it, against all impulse to be reasonable or try to guess what an agent or a publisher or an invisible readership might want. Just go with your gut and then kiss the sunlight and most of your friends goodbye and get to work, forcing yourself to write as a routine.
I don’t believe in waiting for inspiration to strike. It rarely will. You have to decide you’re going to write this book and then treat the work as manual labor that must be done no matter how tired or uninspired or depressed you feel. It’s painful to write. It’s heartbreaking work. But if you’ve chosen to write a book, it doesn’t come from that sensible part of you that thinks of hours in terms of money or success in terms of painlessness.