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I agree with MumstheWord... But, I want to add a few other tips. Like you I started writing as a teenager. Well I was actually in the 6th grade when I wrote my first short story and decided that was what I wanted to do with my life. Im almost 40 now and still not published... So, I had to look back and figure out how I got here without getting published.. Doing so gave me a good set of things that actually seem to help people.

1. Write... They say practice makes perfect anytime your learning something new thats difficult. They are right. There is no way around it. So, if you have a headache and just want to stay in bed all day... Write. If your friends invite you out to do something with them for the third day in a row... Write... If you are mad at the world and want to scream... Write. Nothing, can be more important than the story. That changes between stories of course. When your in the development planning stage and the idea hasn't really formed.... You need to go out and play to figure it out. If your stuck on a part of a story you can't figure out then, get away from it for a while. But, always every day, regardless of what else life tells you needs to be done.. Take a half hour and write.

2. Read. You like to write mystery stories in first person. Read mystery stories in first person. You like to write poetry... research all forms of poetry and study those famous for that style. You want to write High Fantasy... Start with Tolken and move on to others.. But, read... Thats where WDC is perfect. Not only do you get to read and see how everyone else does it. But, you get to learn to do it critically. I go into every review thinking... What would I have done differently that might have made this better?

Heck, I read books that way these days. Everything I read is a chance to learn a new style, new voice, new way of seeing things that you can twist to make your own.

3.) Don't get sidetracked. Unfortunatly priorites are really what make the world go round. I was going to be published by 21. Instead I got married at 18 and was having my second baby at 21. Four more kids and nearly 18 years later... Im still trying to get published because I got sidetracked.

4.) If you want to be a novelist participate and finish Nanowrimo. It won't be your best work. If your like me, it will never see the light of day for anyone else to read. But, it gets you past the hurdle of Geeze this is going to take forever. My record at the moment is 94,000 words in 25 days. I finished one. Then I did it again and again. Sure they aren't my greatest work, but they got me past the idea I could never finish a book.

5.) Edit if you have to... But plan before you write so you have to edit less. Im a fly by the seat of my pants writer. I hate editing. Nanowrimo taught me that If I didn't slow down and plan it out, so that less editing was neccissary, I would abandon perfectly good characters to the destiny of never being read by anyone but me. So plan it all out first then write later.

6. Study your craft. Learn how other people go about developing stories.

7. And in case I forgot to mention it... If your not sleeping then you need to be reading or writing. Yes the dishes can be put on hold for a few days. Just wash them before the flys take over the house. :) And yes you can take time to take a bath... I read in the bathtub all the time. But, whatever you do... the majority of your free time needs to be taken up in reading and writing. As my husbands baseball coach once said.. If you aren't eating and breathing what you say you love, then you don't love it enough to succeed.

Note: I loved my husband and kids more than I did my writing. But, now that the kids don't really need me that much and Hubby knows how to work a stove... My focus has changed and the first love of my life has a priority postion.



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