The foremost advice I’d give them is that they better read everything they can. They better read, read, read, read, read. They better read as many good books as they can. They better put the literature of the world into storage somewhere, because they’re going to need it. The truth is, if you get to be a writer — especially if you get to be a self-supporting one, which means you get to write all day, nothing else gets in your way — if you get to do that, what happens is you’d rather be writing than reading. I’m not a good reader anymore because I write all the time. Literally, all the time. Well, I’m glad. I feel lucky that I was a good reader as a kid, because I don’t know when else I would have done it. I’m not embarrassed that I’m not much of a reader now, because I’m not slacking, you know. I write seven days a week, I can write eight hours a day. Not everybody can do that. I couldn’t do that 20 years ago, but I can do it now. Twenty years ago, when I wasn’t writing screenplays concurrently with whatever novel I’m writing, I was a better reader. I used to read a lot of things when I was between one novel and not yet started in the next. But now I’m never between things, because when I finish a draft of a novel, I go immediately to one or two or three uncompleted screenplays. I just go back and forth. There’s always something on my desk. There’s always something I can be writing, and I’d rather be writing than reading.