Julie Murphy '10 found fast success as a published novelist after she graduated from Texas Wesleyan with a degree in political science.

If you’re looking to get into the writing business, Murphy has some great tips that can help you succeed.

1. Be original

Pursue the art or the novel that you want to read, but haven’t found on the shelves. Create the thing that you want to connect to but haven’t found.

2. Be persistent

You have to be persistent. Even when your book isn’t working or people are telling you no, you have to keep going, because if you stop, you’re telling yourself no. Once you stop, there’s no one stopping you but yourself.

3. Don't compare yourself to others

Understand that writing books is not a one-size-fits-all career. You’re going to create your own rules and create your own hours, and you can’t compare yourself to others because you’re going to see that someone writes a book in two weeks and someone else writes a book in six weeks.

That’s not the point of writing. The point of writing is creating your own rules and your own environment where you feel comfortable and your creativity can flourish.

Busting writer's block

Murphy also has some great advice for those who suffer from writer's block.

"If I sit at a computer and I don't know what I'm going to do or if I don't have a scene in mind, it usually means that I'm just going to bum around on the Internet for six hours," said Murphy.

"My cure for writer's block is to get up from the computer and to ignore my cell phone and all these different things, and to absorb all the things that inspire me.

"Creativity is a well, and when you're writing a novel or working on a piece of art or coding a website or whatever it is that you do with your life, you're drawing from the well. As you finish projects or complete deadlines, you're going to find that the well is lower and lower. 

"If you genuinely have writer's block or you genuinely have any type of creativity block you need refill your well. You need to go back to what inspired you in the first place and just be a sponge."