My Most Important Rule Is One That

After 58 Years You'd Think Writing Would Get Easier. It Doesn't. If You're Lucky, You Become Harder To Please. That's All Right, It's Still A Pleasure.

My Most Important Piece Of Advice To All You Would-be Writers: When You Write, Try To Leave Out All The Parts Readers Skip.

Using Adverbs Is A Mortal Sin.

Never Open A Book With Weather. There Are Exceptions. If You Happen To Be Barry Lopez, Who Has More Ways To Describe Ice And Snow Than An Eskimo, You Can Do All The Weather Reporting You Want.

If You Take A Few Days To Write An Outline, You're Just Making Up Scenes That You Think Will Work, That You Think Will Be Interesting. But As You Write It, Other Ideas Occur - Better Ideas That Have To Do With What You're Writing.