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" What's demanded from us black creatives is both a blessing and a curse, because it pushes you to be your absolute best. You cannot be anything less. "

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" At every writers' conference, you have the opportunity to hear from best-selling authors, top literary agents, and excellent editors who will demystify the publishing industry and give you great advice, no matter where you are in your writing career or what you're currently struggling with. "

" Any person that you would want to watch your movie or see your show or read your book, there's a million other things that they could be watching or reading or doing. "

" There's so much talk of representation in politics and entertainment - it's everywhere - but I didn't realize representation was important until really my senior year of high school. "

" I deeply believed that I wasn't worthy - that I couldn't be in the stories even I was creating. I don't want anyone else to feel like that. "

" As writers, our craft makes us sit alone at a desk and hammer away at our novel. Doing that day in and day out makes it really easy to forget that there's a whole community of writers out there, and they love contributing to other writers' success! "

" Death is something that I am still trying to figure out a healthy relationship with. "

" The knowledge and insights you can get in just one day at a writers' conference make it worth the trip. "

" Every first draft sucks, so when you have your favorite novel, and you're like, 'Wow, this is a masterpiece,' and then you write your first draft, and you're like, 'This is really bad,' and then you're like 'I can't do this because this is nowhere close.' When, in reality, the book you loved so much started out just as crappy. "

" You need a community to succeed. In the back of every book is an acknowledgments page full of all the people it took to get that writer to the book you're holding. "

" You don't realise how cool your culture is until you get out of that phase of trying to fit in. "

" I want to give something to the world that I feel I missed out on as a child, and I want to help people of all races, ethnicities, and orientations understand that no matter what differences we may think we have, everyone is a human, and everyone deserves to be respected and valued. "

" My freshman year of college, 'The Hunger Games' movie adaptation came out, and I was really excited about it. This was maybe 2011. I loved it, but there was a lot of hateful backlash against the black characters in the film. "

" The things I want to do mostly involve writing. "

" If you want to be traditionally published, then you most likely want to get a literary agent. To sign with an agent, you need to send them a query letter, but agents can get up to 20,000 query letters a year. With numbers like that, it helps to get in front of agents with every opportunity you have. "

" Part of the reason everyone is freaking out over 'Black Panther' is because we've never seen it. We have two thousand years of stories, and we've never seen it. "

" The power of fantasy is that you can make people understand the deeper realities of our world in a way that they wouldn't normally be able to because of all the things in our world that closes them off. "

" You're never wasting your time as long as you learn from every single thing you do, whether you feel like those attempts are successful or not. "

" You can make something out of every unfinished story and every rejection if you work at it. "

" The YA author community is generally pretty friendly, and they care. "

" In my perfect world, we'd have one black girl fantasy book every month. We need them, and we need fantasy stories about black boys as well. "

" With the Internet, there are so many ways to connect with other writers who will be some of your best friends and best sources of support for your entire life. "

" Everyone has a story that they read when they were younger that influenced them. "

" It's not about creating something that eight billion people would like. It's about creating something and being able to reach the maybe, like, one million people that would like it a lot. "

" I've been writing stories all my life. My very first story had two little black girls riding horses. They were both me, too, so that's how into me I was. "

" With a fantasy world, it's like, this is my world. I literally made it. So if I tell you something, you do have to sit back and observe more. You need to sit back and listen more to understand what is going on or what's happening in the world. And I think there's a lot of power in that. "

" We like epic stories, we like adventure, we like epic fights, so if you can mix a great story that can also really teach someone about a different experience, you have the potential to really help people. "

" I want a little black girl to pick up my book one day and see herself as the star. I want her to know that she's beautiful, and she matters, and she can have a crazy, magical adventure even if an ignorant part of the world tells her she can never be Hermione Granger. "

" Imagination is a funny thing - we sometimes need to see something before we can truly picture it. "

" My very first story, I was around 5, and I really just wrote myself. When I was 5, I loved myself so much I gave myself a twin named Tomi. Everything started out fine. But then I didn't write another black character until I was 18. "

" I'm a huge 'Harry Potter' fan, but I still think there is a lot of anime that is crazier than 'Harry Potter,' and that was a seven-book masterpiece. "