1. Be willing to write for free at first. There are many, many hometown newspapers and/or newsletters for various organizations. Spend some time contributing your time and building up a list of published stories and articles.

2. Study your intended market. Are you interested in writing fiction or non-fiction? Do you want to write for newspapers? Magazines? Or do you want to write books? (Note: I wrote for all of the above at one time or another. It’s better to be versatile and take whatever opportunities come along.)

3. Join a writers’ group. This provides valuable help, instruction, and sometimes feedback. Utah has a large writing community. The League of Utah writers, for example, has chapters in most cities. Check them out.

4. Read books on writing. I probably read thirty books on various writing subjects when I was getting started.

5. Get feedback! Let trusted friends read through your book first. Give them a list of items to comment on, such as: Does the book bog down anywhere? Did you catch any inconsistencies? Can you clearly visualize my characters? Did anything seem over the top? And other questions in this vein.

6. Learn to cut the wordiness. Beginning writers often try too hard. Don’t overdo the expressive beauty of your sentences. Learn to make every word count. As a magazine editor, I usually hacked out around 50% of most manuscripts. This was not only because of wordiness but also because of space restraints in our magazine. You will need to be okay with an editor cutting your piece to fit. However, the tighter and more professional the writing to begin with, the less cutting it will undergo.

6. Have a third party copyedit your manuscript. Unless you have been trained in copyediting, it’s better to let someone with experience take on this job. Major publishers will do this for you, but if your manuscript is rough to begin with, they may turn it down because of the time and work involved. If you are self-publishing a book, it is vital to let a trained copyeditor prepare your manuscript.

7. Every publishing house has a website with submission guidelines. Follow the submissions guidelines to the letter.

8. Keep your cover letter brief. As a magazine editor, I almost never bothered to read cover letters. Instead, I flipped over to the submission and spent two to five minutes reading it. If it met a need and the writing and expression was fairly good, I gave it a thumbs up. Out of hundreds of submissions a month, less than 5% made the final cut.