Action = Reaction

By Nichole Giles

Summer is a busy time for most people. Then again, so is the rest of the year. Life tends to happen, and if you don’t take a few minutes every day to write a few pages, lines, or even words, you will lose the gift you have been given and it will slip away unnoticed, never to have touched a life. Not even yours.

In light of this, I’d like to share with you a few pieces of advice from literary agent Stephen Fraser, given to a crowd of writers at the BYU Writing for Young Readers Workshop a couple weeks ago.

“Never underestimate the power of a good idea.”

“Writing is a craft that is built from experience and practice.

“A good manuscript is a piece of writing that is truly worthy of you and your audience.”

“You can’t rush a work of art.”

“There is a right place for your good writing, and you can know what it is, so do your research.”

“Be patient, be resourceful, be fearless.”

“It is your individuality that makes your writing good.”

“Writing that is timeless, elegant, crafted, pure, intelligent, strong, dramatic and poetic always has a place. Good books endure.”

“Writers are transcribers of ideas, who are infinite in numbers and always coming.”


Good advice coming from an agent, right? Now, I’d like you to ask yourself one question. Why am I a writer?

Once you have answered that question, ask the next one. What do I have to do to write something every day? When you have figured it out, go ahead and make that sacrifice. Get up earlier, stay up later, skip that TV show, or whatever you have to do to find the time to write, and get going.

But before you do, there is one last thing I want you to remember. ACTION = REACTION. Always. In movies, in story, in life. Now get to it!

(Let’s get a little reaction here!)