Our “Summer Fun” series continues this week! Curious about the best tips from the Blink authors for young authors? Keep reading to learn their hints and secrets!

Tips for young authors hoping to spend some time writing this summer?

Lorie Langdon: Set a daily word count goal, write first thing in the morning, and don’t do anything else until you reach your daily goal. Some days you might even blow your goal out of the water!

Denise Grover Swank: Write every day. Make writing part of your routine. Make it so that it feels like something is missing when you haven’t written for several days.

Jonathan Friesen: Get outside. Live a little. Do something you never thought you could. Be bold. I know a lot of talented young authors, and many write better than I do. Thing is, they haven’t lived much. They haven’t had the type of grand failures and miserable successes that become food for stories and books. So, if you want to write, stop writing and live a little.

Evangeline Denmark: Just start somewhere and then keep writing, even if it’s just a little bit every day. Don’t worry that it isn’t perfect or that you’re not writing as much as you want to. It’s just like training for a marathon. You make progress little bit by little bit every day.

Luke Reynolds: Don’t wait for a “good” idea. Write EVERYTHING THAT COMES TO YOUR MIND. Writing through what may seem like “bad” ideas can actually lead to brilliant ideas.

Carol Lynch Williams: By the time that I was 16 years old I was writing the stories would wind up in my first novel. If you really want to write you have to do just that, write.

One of the wonderful things about writing is that reading is your best teacher. So read like crazy. Read everything you can get your hands on.

And then set aside time each day that is dedicated to this one thing you want to do: write. Don’t give yourself a time limit. It’s easy to play on the computer or search the Internet or watch YouTube. Instead give yourself a word limit.

If you write one page a day (which is about 250 words), at the end of the year you will have 365 pages. That’s a nice sized young adult novel.

Sometimes we think that the things we love the most don’t deserve the time that regular chores or duties require. But writing is work. So let yourself do this job.