All writing teaches—communicates something about something. Even bad writing “teaches.” So if you’re writing, you’re teaching. You can’t help it. But then there’s intentional teaching through writing.

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about [italics mine]. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, creating an “innocent” main character—one ignorant of the lay of the land or the problem to be solved—can be a wonderfully natural way to lead your reader into a story.

How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.551

he would rather you err on the side of caring passionately vs. writing eloquently:

“One way to approach a story,” the writer Josephine Humphreys suggests, “is to think of it as the writer’s response to the most important question he can ask. The response is often complex, ambiguous and changeable, but the question is simple and almost always the same.

Talent is required. But it’s only one of the components for creating good fiction. And being possessed of less than superlative gifts doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue writing.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.108

“Find a subject you care about.”