Let me start with an admission that no writing conference would dare ask me to lecture because I am far too blunt with young writers. The average conference wants every kind of budding author to come, enjoy, return; I want to share the truth about the rigors of our craft.

I have this firm belief that if you desire to produce literary works or instruments of real consequence, you need to invest in some formal university training, and you need to not only accept but invite critiques of your work. That last one’s the hard part and I’ll save it to the end.

Get a Bachelor’s in literature and creative writing at the best school you can access. Concentrate on learning the basics of the craft–you need to learn the rules before you break them. Get a Master’s in Fine Arts which will allow you to focus on your chosen art form.

Look for MFA programs taught by highly credentialed academics who are published writers. You want to be in a teaching model where you write, read, and analyze extensively, one that uses critique “pods” to provide feedback from your peers as well as your professors.

Look for additional training, such as conferences offered by top colleges that feature academics and writers who often sell a critique package as part of the benefits. Later, when you have a manuscript to pitch, those same conferences often sell meet-and-greets with agents.

Subscribe to the best of the writing magazines—Poets & Writers—and cull through the many “writing” books on the market. When you’ve learned the basics of the craft, read The Half-Known World: On Writing Fiction by academic and published author Robert Boswell.

Now to the most important advice, and the hardest to accept or use. If you want to be a great writer—or just a very good one—you must invite critique of your work. You won’t agree with all of it, or use all of it—but the value of this process starts with letting down defenses.

I have been a writer most of my life, and I always feel mortally wounded when someone takes issue with a story, a sentence, a word. But as writers, we cannot see all the flaws in our work; we need the dispassionate view of others (particularly others who are trained to the craft).

You’ve heard the old adage, “Kill your darlings.” This is good advice, attributed to numerous authors including Hemingway, Faulkner, Welty. Or as Slate’s culture editor Forrest Wickman paraphrases: “You have to get rid of your most precious and . . . self-indulgent passages for the greater good of your literary work.”

Get educated, continue learning, invite critiques, be merciless in editing, and write!

Jonnie Martin

POST SCRIPT: What is your advice to young writers? What would you like them to know about craft? What would you like to know? My thoughts on Paul Harding’s Booker Prize-nominated novel, This New Eden, is on tap next Saturday.