Sarah J. Maas built her career the slow way, drafting a manuscript as a teenager, revising it for years, and eventually turning it into a multi-series publishing career. When she talks to aspiring writers, her advice tends to reflect that path more than any shortcut. It's less about tricks and more about sticking with a manuscript long enough to find out what it actually is.
Finish the Book Before You Judge It
Maas spent years revising the manuscript that became Throne of Glass before it ever sold. She didn't abandon it when early versions weren't working, and she didn't wait for a perfect draft before moving forward. The advice that comes out of that experience, echoed across her interviews, is straightforward: get to the end. A finished, flawed manuscript teaches you more about your story than an abandoned, polished opening chapter ever will.
Don't Force an Outline That Isn't Working
Because she's a discovery writer herself, Maas's advice to other writers tends to push back on the idea that outlining is mandatory. She's talked about trusting her gut over a rigid plan and letting her characters pull the story in directions she didn't originally intend. Her implicit advice to writers who struggle with outlines is permission: if planning every beat in advance kills your momentum, you're allowed to write toward the destination without mapping the entire route first.
Use Music or Ritual to Find the Story's Emotional Core
One piece of process advice Maas has shared more concretely is her use of music. Building a playlist before drafting helps her locate a book's emotional register before she starts writing scenes, and she's suggested this kind of ritual can help other writers too. The idea generalizes beyond music. Find whatever gets you back into a story's headspace quickly, and use it on purpose instead of waiting for inspiration to show up on its own.
Expect Revision to Be Where the Real Work Happens
Maas has been open about writing fast, rough first drafts and doing the heavy lifting in revision. For writers who get discouraged by a messy draft, her example suggests the roughness isn't a warning sign. It's just the first pass. The books readers know her for went through extensive rewriting before they looked anything like their final versions, starting all the way back with that first FictionPress draft of Queen of Glass.
For more on how these habits show up across her actual drafting process, read the full Sarah J. Maas writing routine.
What You Can Steal
- Get to the end of a draft before you judge it. Revision can fix almost everything except an unfinished manuscript.
- Give yourself permission to skip a full outline if it's slowing you down. A handful of known turning points can be enough to draft from.
- Build a ritual, musical or otherwise, that gets you back into your story's emotional tone quickly whenever you sit down to write.
- Treat your first draft as raw material, not a final product. The gap between Maas's teenage FictionPress draft and her published debut is the whole argument for revision.