I experience my failures and learn from them. I do not require a pity party to recover. I share successes because it is only successes that have anything in them that a publisher saw as worthy of publication. Once I learn what works, I am more than happy to share that for the few writers who care.

The Oxford comma is a comma after the last of a string of modifiers. Without: The quick, tall man. With: The quick, tall, man. Most publishers do not require it now. I don't care. My aim is to please the publisher and if he says yay or nay, I yay or nay to his/her command.

The only thing that triggers in me when I see a misspelling is a question: Who was responsible for it? I turned in a perfect proof copy. The end product had one mistake on the last page. My proof copy had it correct. It was one letter out of order. The book was award-winning. I forgive whomever!

I don't set my writing to a stopwatch. I write. I query and then I write again. I don't need coping mechanisms because I leave my ego at home when I write. Writing is about me. Getting it published is about the publisher and the reader.
No matter your time schedule, you can't hurry writing.

Not so far. I do it the old-fashioned way: I skim read until something interesting crosses my path and I stop to read it. One person's spam is another person's "best output." I'm a long-time professional writer so my interests aren't what a newbie's might be.

The issue becomes: Does the person know how many he or she needs? It is how many the story needs and the only way to find that out is the hard way: Get published a few times and get rejected a few and see if word count was an element of the acceptance or rejection. There is no set number.

Essential only if you want to sell books, get a name for yourself, or attain connection with readers. Otherwise, you can depend on word of mouth which works only for people who already have a sterling reputation.

Publishers will not accept material that is produced with AI. They use detectors to ascertain if AI is used. Cheating writers whose material was stolen to produce AI writing is a no-no among professionals.

I am an author of three books from my professional work in the fields of abuse and addictions and a dark psychological mystery as well as hundreds of shorter pieces in fiction, nonfiction and academic works. My career as a psychotherapist gave me grist for the writing mill.

I'm even "brand newer" than you. I like what I have seen so far. Bluesky isn't perfect, but it beats the blatant stupidity on Facebook and the vile hatred on X. It is so nice to read a post and not find a single word misspelled! I love even more the paucity of adverbs!

But before you do all that, make your bed, put the dirty laundry in the basket and tie your shoes! Cut down on the toxic chemicals and junk foods and the demons will fade into the background! 😉

If you want to be a writer, you will write. If you want to be a dreamer, you will hope that you can sit and ponder, and a book will appear. As a writer published over 400 times, it never came easy ... but it did come if I continued to work at it.

I don't agree. Libraries and gardens are passive. You also need a pen and paper to express your opinion and make it heard.

Alexis, I know you are speaking tongue-in-cheek, but so many putative writers believe that all they need to do is smear 80,000 random words on a document and they have created a book. Writing a book is like creating a jigsaw puzzle. Every word must fit to perfection. Been there and did that!

Be careful what you pray for. There is a JD Vance tied to your wish and when one goes, the other arrives in full, poisonous bloom.