Maybe you want to write romance novels with sizzling sex scenes. Maybe you want to write action novels with superheroes. Maybe you just want to write short stories. Maybe you don’t know how to get started writing.

One of the best things to do is read your favorite novelists, well-known, contemporary, top New York Times best-selling authors.

You may want to read action/adventure/humorists like James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Janet Evanovich, or romance greats like Sandra Brown, Nora Roberts, J. R. Ward, Susan Mallery, Lori Foster, Jennifer Crusie, and Louisa Edwards.

Also go back and read some of the Science Fiction classics from the mid-1940s on.

Then to become a good, successful, best-selling writer, here’s the key. When you read, read with small thumb-sized sticky notes with you. Every time you see a good metaphor or simile, a good word choice, riveting action sentence, a red-hot sex scene, mark that sentence with your Post-it note. Then go back and copy all of the sentences you like in one document. Regularly re-read your best book snippets. This is how you learn from the masters.