In my travels across the interwebs, I came across the below advice from C. S. Lewis. In response to fan letter from a young Narnia fan, Joan Lancaster, Lewis wrote the following:
 

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

source: io9

I was a big, BIG fan of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and from this gateway book grew to love the whole Chronicles of Narnia series. To read advice like this from an author I loved as a kid is infinitely inspiring.