1. You will get rejected hundreds of times. I have a spreadsheet of all the times I've been rejected — by editors, agents, publishers — and it's hundreds of lines long. It took me three or four years to get my first short stories published, and longer until I sold my first novel. Luckily, many of my friends are also writers, so they understood that rejection is part of the job and helped to soften the blow until I got used to it.

2. Being a writer involves way more than just writing. When I sold the manuscript for my first book, I figured I had the "writer" thing down. I understood how to create a character, build a plot, and work with my agent to sell the book. What I didn't realize is that there's this whole other set of skills that comes with being a published author. You'll be asked to do public readings, you'll have to network with booksellers and librarians, and you'll have to interact with readers online.

3. Writing YA novels is not a financial jackpot. Writers like Stephenie Meyer and J. K. Rowling make it seem like YA fiction is the place to become mega-famous and mega-rich. Sadly, that's not the case. There are definitely standouts — four out of 15 on Forbes' highest-earning authors of 2015 are YA authors — but it's not typical to make a fortune. A YA novel could get a $1,000 or $100,000 advance. The money is really hard to predict.

4. Even if you get a large advance, you can't cash in right away. Stephenie Meyer famously got a $750,000 advance for the Twilight series. Good for her! But even if you sell your manuscript for a bazillion dollars, you don't get all that money in one fat paycheck. It takes months to negotiate the contract, and your payments are often split up into three parts — you get a chunk when you sign the contract, a chunk when you hand in the manuscript, and a chunk when the book is published. It can take anywhere from 18 months to three years between offer and publication. You also have to factor in your agent's fee (around 15 percent), your self-employment income tax (around 20 percent), and any of your book-writing expenses. Even something as huge as $750,000 starts to shrink really fast.

5. There's no shame in getting a second job. Given how unpredictable the book-writing money is, it can be nice to have a regular paycheck from something else. I'm on the faculty at Hamline University's Masters in Writing for Children and Young Adults Program. Plus, having another source of income — even if it's small — can take the pressure off your writing, so you can write what you love instead of being desperate to figure out what kind of book will sell.

6. You have to master setting your own deadlines. Your editor might set a due date for your manuscript or a certain number of pages, but most of your deadlines are self-imposed. I'm incredibly distractible, so I spend a lot of time monitoring myself to make sure I'm not getting lost on the internet. I also have a loose "structure" to my days, which is that I keep my writing time to the morning and in the afternoon, I do any kind of critical work or research. I also set my own personal deadlines — for example, when I'm drafting, I try to write at least five pages each day.

7. It's OK to borrow plots from the classics. The first book I ever wrote had a great, strong character, but it didn't really have a story. I really had no idea how to move the character through time and space, and ultimately, that ruined the book. Later, I realized that storytellers have been borrowing plots from fairytales and mythology for hundreds of years, so when I get stuck, I look to some of those stories. Ten years after I started that first book without a plot, I rewrote it using fairy tale motifs, and it was published as Bad Apple. My latest novel, Bone Gap, is a loose retelling of the Persephone myth.

8. You have to do a lot of research before you set pen to paper. Before I started writing Bone Gap — which is about a 17-year-old boy who witnesses the kidnapping of his brother's girlfriend, but no one believes what he saw — I did a ton of research. I read about neurological issues; I read The Farmer's Almanac; I read about phases of the moon; I researched people who settled in downstate Illinois in the 1800s. Little pieces of all those things made their way into the novel. I like to use facts as a jumping-off point for my fiction.

9. To become a great writer, you have to leave your house. In the year after I published my first book, I spent most of my time at home in my yoga pants, and not only was it lonely, but my work suffered. Writers are observers of the world, and you can't observe the world from inside your house. How will you know what's interesting to your readers? Where will you draw inspiration for strong characters? You have to force yourself to go outside, even if it's just to get a cup of coffee.

10. Adults will assume your writing is dumb or watered-down. I've encountered people who legitimately think I write fiction for young people because it's easy. I've also met people who think I write YA novels in the hope they'll turn into Blockbuster films, like the Divergent series. Nope! I actually think younger readers, more than adults, are interested in reading books that are critical about the world. Sometimes, when a well-meaning person suggests YA novels are shallow, I'll try to explain that teen books can be as complex as teens themselves. Mostly, though, I smile and nod and feel sorry for them.

11. Write what you like, not what you think is trendy. For a while, realistic fiction was the genre en vogue. But then The Hunger Games came along and there was a shift toward fantasy and science fiction. You never know what genre or type of story will be "trendy" next, so there's no point in writing to trends. Just write what you love.

12. Nostalgia has no place in books for teens. As you get older, it's very easy to fall into the trap of nostalgia. Some YA books are like, "I remember in my day…" No one wants to read that! Writing for teenagers requires knowing what's interesting to teenagers today versus what was interesting to you as a teenager. The emotions are always the same, but the language and the references will be different. Since I visit a lot of schools, I end up talking to teens as a matter of course. And having opinionated nieces and nephews helps.

13. There will be days when you don't feel creative. The work I do is my dream job, yes, but it does still feel like a job. There are days when I'm in awe of the worlds I get to create with my writing, and other days where I'd rather do almost anything else. When I'm not feeling creative, I try to do a little more research and find new facts for the book. It's also nice to fill your head with other forms of art, like visual art and music.

14. It doesn't get easier after the first book. I thought that once I wrote a book and published it, writing the next one would become easier. Nope, not even a little bit. I'm writing book nine right now, and I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing some days. Each book requires a completely new process, and there are no shortcuts.

Laura Ruby is the author of eight books, including Bone Gap, which was a National Book Award Finalist and won the 2016 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature.

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