If I knew then...

Oh boy.

One the one hand, a ton of stuff runs through my mind, everything from "I wish I knew then just how hard this was" to "I wish I knew that idea I had was a good one" to "I wish I knew how distracting children really are!"

On the other? Not much.

Because it's a learning process. Every word, every sentence, every page and chapter and book teach you something different. I'm a far, far better writer now than I was when I started four years ago. Hopefully I will be a far, far better writer four years from now.

I wish I'd known that finishing a book is itself an acheivement (hell, I wish I could remember that now.)

I wish I'd known that first books are rarely any good, so maybe those first few rejections wouldn't have been so hard.

I wish I'd known a LOT more about passive voice. "She felt" "he felt"--all fine in moderation, and sometimes there's no other way to say it, but boy, my first couple of mss were riddled with that junk. "She felt her hands clench". "She felt his hand close around hers." "She felt like she had to speak."

Sometimes those distancing words are necessary. Sometimes characters need to remove themselves from action. But sheesh, my characters did so much feeling and thinking hardly anything else happened. Instead of "she felt her hands clenched", just say "Her hands clenched." Or, better, "Her fingernails dug into her palms."

I wish I'd known about certain cliches: the Evil Ex, the Obvious Villain, the Frightened Virgin. All of which are stll useful, and can work very well. But the first ms wasn't the place where any of those worked for me.

Writing is about constantly improving. You know more than you think you do now. You'll know even more tomorrow.