Always set aside some time to write everyday. Writing first thing in the morning is the best time of the day and makes it easier to write through out the rest of the day.

Write on the paper, not in your thoughts. Let the words flow onto the paper. Thinking too much about what you're going to write can result in actually writing little to nothing at all.

Set your ideas to paper, even if you don't think they are the greatest ones for a story. You need to create material to work from. The first draft is almost never a masterpiece but provides the building blocks for you to work with to mold the story into something spectacular. If you wait for the divine inspiration, you may not end up writing anything.

Be sure to transfer the images in your head to the paper. This process is done mostly unaware by the author, but the moment the author realizes this process and takes a more active stance, more imagery can be developed from something ordinary to something extraordinary.

A good way to battle writer's block is with simple brainstorming exercises. You can try writing lists or writing down a single word/idea and coming up with ideas that relate to that central theme. During brainstorming, you may come across with a great idea or even several with which to work.

A thesaurus is one of the greatest tools you can utilize. Not only will it help you during the revision process but it can also help jump-start ideas. Also, make sure to have a dictionary on hand as well.

Set goals for yourself. Set some that are attainable and set a few that are a harder to reach. This will help add structure to your writing. By obtaining the easier goals you will reach a sense of accomplishment while the harder goals will leave you something still to strive towards. The small goals can be something like writing ten pages by the end of the week while the large goals can be having your story published in two years.

Don't try to revise as you are writing. Keep the editing and writing processes separate. Get our ideas down and then go back and correct anything. If you try to combine the two processes you can block yourself from writing freely and get stuck on one section for a long time trying to make it perfect rather then completing the remainder of your story.

Writing is not easy; otherwise, everyone would be doing it. Expect to hit some roadblocks during the process. It's how you handle the roadblocks that will make you a better writer. As with life, every difficulty you encounter will ultimately comprise the type of writer you will become.

Write what you know. The easiest writing comes from experiences you've had first-hand and can vividly recreate in a fictional or non-fictional setting. It may be uncomfortable at first as it seems that you are revealing a private part of yourself, but just use the experience as a guideline from which to build your story.

When writing a non-fiction article for a paper or magazine, stay within the requested word limit! If it's 500 words, it should be 500, not 400 or 600. If it's 1500 words, it should be 1500.

Some years ago I wrote what was supposed to be a 1000-word article and was actually over 1200 words...and I was docked a part of my payment for going over the word limit.

"Brevity is the soul of wit"...and the profit of a disciplined writer!