"Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either"

Write what you’d love to discover on a shelf: that’s the heart of the guidance. Taste is not a private indulgence; it’s a tuning fork. When you chase your own delight, you produce energy on the page, risk, specificity, odd angles, that can’t be faked. Readers feel that voltage. They don’t need to share your biography to share your excitement; they need to sense that the writer is awake.

Advice proliferates because writing is terrifyingly open-ended. Rules promise safety: outline, don’t outline; show, don’t tell; market wants X, not Y. But rules are tools, not governors. If your compass is external, you drift toward trend-chasing and second-guessing, and the result reads like a committee meeting. The paradox is that the more you aim to please everyone, the less you move anyone.

Liking your own work isn’t narcissism; it’s quality control. You are your first reliable audience, the one present for every draft. If a scene bores you, revision won’t rescue it by adding adjectives; the problem is purpose. If a character surprises you, that spark is a signal to explore further. Pleasure becomes a diagnostic: where you lean forward, readers likely will too.

Writing what you want to read doesn’t mean ignoring craft or feedback. It means using both in service of your curiosity. Learn structure so you can hold the story you care about. Seek critique to sharpen the book you would actually buy, not the one that wins theoretical points. Follow markets, not to mimic, but to locate kindred spirits you haven’t met yet.

Sincerity is not a soft virtue; it’s a strategy. The story only you can love first is the story others can love at all. Start there, and let taste, not noise, lead. From that fidelity, voice emerges, and with voice, trust between writer and reader.