Goodreads asked Roberta Grimes:

What’s your advice for aspiring writers?

Roberta Grimes The only thing that I know how to suggest is to do what I did: read very good writers, and then WRITE. In the seventies I was reading John Steinbeck, John Updike, and Anne Tyler - three beautiful wordsmiths - and then in 1977 I sat down and wrote the first (horrendously bad) draft of a novel that I called various things, but eventually it became Letter from Freedom. I rewrote that novel repeatedly, played with every aspect of it, and eventually lost track of it. When I rediscovered it 30 years later - after having mainstream-published two other novels - I thought that, wow, it was pretty good! But that was only because Steinbeck, Updike, and Tyler were wonderful teachers and because I rewrote it maybe 20 times. Keep writing until you can put words together in your sleep!

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