I first discovered Jerry Pournelle through Leo Laporte’s TWIT podcast, and have marveled over the prolific author ever since. His Chaos Manor column is among one of my favorite technology columns, and manages to make me love the craft of writing even more.

While poking around on his website, the original “blog”, I found a rather fascinating piece that discussed how to become a writer. Here is a brief sample, I encourage you to click the title of this post to see the article in its entirety:

The secret of becoming a writer is that you have to write. You have to write a lot. You also have to finish what you write, even though no one wants it yet. If you don’t learn to finish your work, no one will ever want to see it. The biggest mistake new writers make is carrying around copies of unfinished work to inflict on their friends.