Write Good or Die

you saying. You don't know me, Brandon—I've got talent to burn. Just you wait and see, I'm gonna give Stephen King a run for his money.
    Really? I've got a newsflash for you: Stephen King wrote five manuscripts before he penned one that was good enough to publish.
    It took King so long because when he wrote those first few books, he was still learning the fundamentals of the craft. Just as you, my friend, ought to do.
    (All of us, even those of us with many books in print, are still learning. Anyone who says he knows everything there is to know about writing is either lying, or a fool.)
    Approach your first novel as a learning experience, not as your surefire plan to become rich and famous. Don't even think about hitting a bestseller list. (Well, dreaming about it is okay, but don't get carried away.) The odds of you writing a bestseller your first time out of the gate are so astronomical that you'd be better off playing the lottery.
    Instead, focus your time and efforts on learning the craft. View your first novel as a training ground, your opportunity to hone your ability to dramatize a story, bring characters to life, paint backgrounds, develop your prose, and the thousand other things you need to be able to do in order to write well.
    And you must finish the manuscript. I can't tell you how many people I meet who say they've had a book in progress for years. But guess what? No one cares about an unfinished story. Of all the lessons that are essential to your future as a fiction writer, learning how to finish what you've begun is one of the most critical.
    Finishing a story requires perseverance, a dogged determination to gut it out and plow through it, even when—especially when—you feel it isn't going well. When you're depressed about the story, when you're convinced that it's garbage, resist the temptation to throw it away. Keep going, hammering away until you reach the end.
    Back to Stephen King. When he was working on Carrie , his first published novel, he hit a rough spot and threw it in the trash. His wife came home, saw the book in the wastebasket, took it out, and started reading it. She liked what she read and encouraged him to finish.
    He listened to his wife. Carrie went on to earn him a gigantic sum of money and was adapted into a successful film. The rest is history.
    None of that would have happened if King had given up on the manuscript. So, finish it. Yes, it will probably be bad, because you are still learning the ropes, but that's okay. You'll know a lot more about novel writing than you did before.
    But. . . let's say that you think I'm wrong about the quality of your story and are convinced that it's good. Should you try to get it published?
    Sure, go ahead. You may be one of those exceedingly rare authors who can publish his/her maiden effort. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, you know?
    But don't count on it. Ray Bradbury once said that you have to write a million words of fiction in order to become proficient. Your first manuscript, if it ended at a hundred thousand words or so, is just ten percent of that. You have a lot of work ahead of you.
    But your journey has begun.

    Brandon Massey— http://www.brandonmassey.com
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16. Seven Bad Habits of Highly Ineffective Writers
    By Scott Nicholson
    http://www.hauntedcomputer.com

    While writing, editing, representing, and publishing are all highly subjective skills, or even “arts” depending on your definition, repeated exposure to certain unsuccessful traits make them easy to identify. In short, it’s much easier to find what is failing rather than explain what makes a piece of writing succeed.
    After working as a freelance editor for several years and logging a decade as a journalist and copy editor, I’ve found a number of minor problems that sap vitality from an otherwise compelling story. Some writers even believe those small errors will not hurt their manuscript’s chances, not realizing they are competing with hundreds or thousands of similar manuscripts. Careful editing is especially important in an era when editors spend more time meeting with the sales staff than scrawling notes in red ink. Whether you carefully pore over your manuscript on your own or trust someone else with the task, the ultimate goal is to have a manuscript that’s as flawless as possible.
    In the manuscripts I’ve edited, I have encountered a number of recurring practical errors that make even a blockbuster story lose a little luster.
    1. Comma