Lately I've been asked a lot if I have any writing advice, particularly for young aspiring writers. The video below contains about the only writing advice I feel that I can provide with any kind of confidence:



My publishing advice to teens is: Generally, don't. What is the point of trying to publish now? There is so much to be gained from waiting and so little to be gained from not waiting. I think that not worrying about publishing a novel by the age of 16 will free young writers from the constraints of the literary marketplace. And if you write a novel that's really wonderful, then you can always revise it and publish it later. (See, for instance, M. T. Anderson's Whales on Stilts.)

Okay, back to Paper Towns.

This is great stuff.

Norman Mailer, the man who invented the word "fug" (as noted in "An Abundance of Katherines"), has died. My boss at "Booklist" used to eviscerate me whenever I conflated a writer's writing with a writer's politics, so I'll remember his work not his misogyny: Much of his stuff was a little puffed-up for me, like a wiry seventh grader who wants to show you how many pull-ups he can do. But I think "The Naked and the Dead" is a really good novel.

Anyway, Mailer's fug-invention is acknowledged in this obituary as being a "noteworthy" facet of his famous first novel.