My 10 Tips for Writing

1. If you find that you have a story in your mind, and that it you loose all motivation to write it after the first few lines try finding a story or idea in your mind that's still developing, develop it as you write your first draft. This avoids you having a developed story grow boring, like a movie you've already seen twenty times before in your head. You don't want to grow tired of your story before before you reach the second chapter.
2. Allow room for change. Sometimes great ideas will come halfway through writing your story.
3. When you hit a block, try skipping ahead. Remember, you can bridge sections later.
4. Or, in a block, try to develop a new character or add depth to a current character. Add a layer in and write it out properly, integrating it into the draft.
5. Gain a proper, in-depth understanding of all your characters, the more real and believable they are, the more engaging it is for the reader.
6. Make them real, with faults, and don't simply try to live through them, make them different from yourself, but close enough so you can write them truthfully (check with Mary Sue test)
7. You don't have to have solid themes beforehand, it's great if you do but otherwise, once you're part way through check what themes are developing naturally. You can then choose whether to work form them and/or to keep them running through the book.
8. You also don't have to make themes to obvious, and you can have more than one, you can have several main themes and others in the background, remember, the more well thought-out and in-depth layers you have to you work, the more interesting it is.
9. Read your book out loud to yourself to check your writing, and read parts backwards, sentence by sentence to check them, (reading backwards helps prevent you from reading what you think is there and helps you read each word objectively).
10. Lastly, write fearlessly. Remember that writing is power, you can always come back and change your work, but the more you write the better at it you will become naturally. Also, cultivate your mind, look at how other writers write, find new material and be unafraid to try new things out in your writing.