Writing is like falling in love . . .

Writing is like falling in love in that we know it happens but no one is quite sure how it happens. Writing can be learned, but only the hard way, by doing it. You must make your own mistakes, learn what you can from them, then plunge on to make more mistakes.

If you go about this properly, both in falling in love and in writing, you won’t make the same mistake more than three times and your new mistakes will be bigger and better than your old ones and you will learn more from them.

--Gene Olson, Sweet Agony: A Writing Manual of Sorts