Miscellaneous Advice and Collected Words of Wisdom

• Don't worry about selling the story you wrote. Worry about writing a story that will sell itself.
• Just because someone says he knows something doesn't mean he does. The world's full of "writers" and "agents" and "editors" who have no clue what they're doing.
• Yog's Rule: Money flows toward the writer. Any business that wants the writer to put up money should be avoided. A business that takes a cut of money on its way to the writer, such as an agent taking a commission, is acceptable, but the direction of flow should always be toward you, never away.
• It's not an editor's job to be fair to writers. It's an editor's job to make money for his publisher by acquiring and packaging books people want to read. Writing professionally is not a contest or a competition or a sweepstakes; it's a business, and you're on the selling end in a buyer's market. Expect editors to treat you not like a beloved student, but like a salesman who's interrupting them -- you'd better have a product that'll make the interruption worthwhile, and the manners to convince them to look at it.
• "I'm often asked if writing classes are any help, and my immediate and enthusiastic answer is always, Yes! Writing classes are wonderful for the writers who teach them and can't make ends meet without that supplementary income. They are also good places for unattached people to meet, talk about books and movies, have a few drinks and possibly hook up. But teach you to write? No. A writing class will not teach you to write."
                      --Stephen King, "The Writing life," Washington Post Book World, October 1, 2006
• "Like it or not, there is a culture of unpublished writers. It includes its own mythology (sending yourself your own ms by registered mail to somehow secure magical protection from plagiarism and copyright infringement), superstitions (paperclip or not?), hagiography and so on. In that culture it's a fairly widespread belief that there is no real communication between an editor and an unknown writer."
                      -- Fred Welden, SFF-Net, Feb. 1999If you are an unpublished writer, it's easy to be drawn into the culture Fred describes. It's easy to accept its mythology. You'll find dozens of people who believe it all implicitly.
  Don't.
  Some of that mythology is useful information; much of it is pernicious nonsense and superstition that will only get in your way.
  
• There's a whole industry out there advising beginning writers, feeding off the culture mentioned above. Some of it is honest and helpful; some isn't. Let me point you toward a few resources and warn you away from a few others:
• SFWA's Webpage has a lot of good advice, regardless of what genre you're writing in -- the same basics apply.
• There are a couple of bits worth reading at HWA's site, too.
• The small-press magazine Speculations is usually useful
• The SFWA Bulletin can be trusted.
• Writer's Digest, alas, is not trustworthy -- I think they're basically well-intentioned, but much of their income comes from paid ads from people who prey on unsuspecting would-be writers, so they'll sometimes give advice that's designed not so much to help beginners as to keep their advertisers in business.
• If you have the sort of personality that can handle the rough-and-tumble of Usenet newsgroups, rec.arts.sf.composition is aimed at advising beginning writers in the SF/fantasy field, and can be useful. Misc.writing, alas, I cannot recommend; the louder voices have triumphed over the more knowledgeable there.

This post came from a website.Below is a link to said website. I've been writing for 6 yrs on and off. I have finished my first book, which is due to be published in Jan 2011. Remember I have been researching a lot about writing and what I could learn from others.