Here are 6 important writing tips:

1. It's all about you. You're the one doing the writing. You're the one expressing your ideas. You're the one doing the work. If you don't believe in yourself, don't even try. If you need validation from others, don't waste your time. If you care what others thinks about what you have to say, give up. As long as you're unique and you're voice is honest, you will find an audience. If you try to shape what you feel or think for the approval of some hypothetical audience, you'll never come up with anything worth reading.

2. Modesty is for the weak. It takes a certain amount of arrogance to know that your work is worth reading. Don't be ashamed of being arrogant. People who are modest are modest because they're desperate to be accepted.

3. Finish your first draft before you even worry about editing. If you go back and edit before finishing that first draft, you're going to get lost.

4. Typos happen. Be sure to correct them but don't beat yourself up when you come across them in a first, second, or even third draft. As writers, we tend to view typos as being a personal failure but, as I said, they happen to everyone.

5. Be careful about social media. Social media can not only dumb you down but it's also not a substitute for actual experience. Reading someone's tweets about doing something is not the same thing as actually doing it yourself.

6. If you're like me and suffer from extreme ADD, background noise can help you focus. Whenever I write, I always either turn on the TV or I listen to music. For whatever reason, the sound helps to focus me. At the same time, it's important that whatever that background noise is, it needs to be something familiar. Don't put on a movie that you've never seen or music that you've never heard. Pick something comforting and safe, something that will relax you but won't distract you. Myself, I usually put on an old episode of Degrassi.