Adam, welcome!

I'm going to hit you with a bunch of suggestions, in the order in which they come to me. Some can be done now and done easily. Others might be more appropriate for some time down the road.

First: Practice. Keep a journal that you can carry everywhere with you. Record observations, thoughts, ideas, lists, the dialogue you overhear, anything, whether or not it has to do with your story. Make writing an everyday occurrence, because it's the verbal equivalent of exercise. It will develop your storytelling muscles. A journal is also your raw data, so there is no wrong way to do it. Just keep on keepin' on.

Second: Find a good critique group if you can. If you can't, find trusted readers who can give you constructive criticism, like, "I don't understand why Character A is doing Action B. What's his/her/its motivation?" Or, "Take the apostrophe out of 'it's' because you're using it here as a possessive, not a contraction." Or, "Character X has blue eyes in Chapter 2 but yellow eyes in Chapter 6. Did the eyes really change color, or do you have to fix this?" You want people who will give you useful information, not rubber-stamp your manuscript or give you *only* useless, subjective generalizations like, "I love this!" or, "This sucks!"

Third: Find good general writing guides if you need to bone up on grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation, etc. Do it in tandem with writing your draft, because you want to get your story out on paper and/or pixel now. You can revise it later, using what you've learned in the interim.

Here are some useful online guides:

www.bartleby.com/141/index.html
William Strunk, Jr.'s The Elements of Style: An excellent online version of the classic Strunk & White

grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/
Guide to Grammar and Writing, from the Capital Community College Foundation

andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/
Jack Lynch's Guide to Grammar and Style, which has one of the more useful indexes I've seen

(From what I've seen of your bio page, I think you're fine here. But even though I've been writing and editing for decades, I sometimes have to dive back into my copy of Basic English Handbook or Chicago Manual of Style.)

With respect to science fiction and world-building:

www.larseighner.com/world_bu...ndex.html
Patricia C. Wrede's Worldbuilder, compiled by Lars Seighner. This is an extraordinary checklist of questions that can help you structure the world of your story.

These sites and many more are on a constantly-evolving list I keep of writing, editing, research, and marketing resources:
home.earthlink.net/~emalcohn/ledit.html

I've also given a workshop in character development, both inside and outside the genre:
home.earthlink.net/~emalcohn/create.html

Fourth: Read. Study the books and stories you like. Ask yourself why you like them and examine what the author did to win you over.

Fifth: If you can, go to a convention where you can encounter readers, writers, people in the craft, people in the business. In other words, people who understand you and who know where you're coming from.

For the SF/F focus, next year's Westercon is in Las Vegas:
www.westercon61.org/

With respect to writing in general, the Henderson Writers' Group is local to you:
www.hendersonwritersgroup.com/

HWG also holds the Las Vegas Writer's Conference:
www.lasvegaswritersconference.com/

You can also seek out author appearances at your local library, university, etc. Chances are you'll find people there who are also writing.

If conferences are too much right now, various online forums can provide useful information. One within the sf/f/h/etc. genres is the Rumor Mill at Speculations.com
www.speculations.com/

For more general writing topics:

Poets & Writers Speakeasy Forum
www.pw.org/

The Writer (articles, resources, and forums, etc.)
www.writermag.com/wrt/

Writers' BBS (more than 50 active forums in many genres)
www.writersbbs.com/

The bottom line is to treat writing the way you treat other endeavors. Practice it. Study it. Network with fellow practitioners. Be passionate about it. Keep persevering and don't get discouraged -- this last bit applies both to the act of writing and to marketing your work. If you hit a dead end in your story, try skipping to another section or try another approach. Maybe you need to tell your story in a different order. (The opening chapter in John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was originally chapter 9.) Maybe you need to use a different point of view character (Sue Grafton originally began writing B is for Burglar using a different character point of view and changed the POV when her original one wasn't working).

I learned about Berendt and Grafton through a terrific little book by Naomi Epel called The Observation Deck.

Feel free to experiment and find what works for you, because one size does not fit all. I was recently on a panel at our local library with two other authors. All of us have been published (my short fiction, poetry, and articles have appeared in dozens of publications beginning in the 1970s and I was a small-press editor in the 1980s). All of us are novelists (the first volume in my series has just been published and a contract for the second book is forthcoming. Another panelist will have a novel and a novella published next year. The third panelist publishes short fiction regularly, edits anthologies, recently won a state arts grant, and has an agent who is shopping her novel out to publishers). Among the three of us, we have written in more than half a dozen different genres. We all have different writing, researching, and outlining styles. Those styles can also change depending on the individual project.

Above all, don't try to be "perfect" from the get-go. Loosen up so your story can get out there.

Finally, I want to point you to several series of posts by professional writers. One is Laini Taylor's blog "Not for Robots," which is a terrific treatise on the writing craft:
notforrobots.blogspot.com/

Another is Lary (one 'r') Crews's comments on the Flickr "Writers" discussion board, on overcoming writer's block:
www.flickr.com/groups/354...scuss/1915/

Science fiction author Crawford Killian, who also teaches SF writing, has a very informative blog geared toward the craft at:
crofsblogs.typepad.com/fiction/

There's much more out there, but this should give you a general flavor of what's available.
Keep on keepin' on, keep your sense of wonder intact, and good luck! -- Elissa

P.S. Different spins of religious/spiritual ideas is an interest of mine, too. One of my favorite works about religion is Mircea Eliade's 3-volume set A History of Religious Ideas. The first book in my series (Deviations: Covenant, published by Aisling Press -- www.aislingpress.com ) is set in a community whose often troublesome religion traces its roots to a harsh ecological reality. Part of my inspiration came from anthropologist Michael Harner's article, "The ecological basis for Aztec sacrifice" (American Ethnologist 4(1), February 1977).

I am in the same boat or maybe the own floating next to yours.=) Between work, family, and life I don't get to write nearly as much as I want. I started my first story in years(other than for classes or nieces and nephews) last year around this time. I am nowhere near finished with the first draft but chipping away at it as often as I can. Elisa had some great suggestions(she always does!). I am going to use them for my own evil purposes as well. This is a great tribe to bounce ideas off of or just to vent/boast. Welcome to the tribe and the wonderful world of writing.=)

Hello Adam,

I know that you have received a lot of great ideas from others on this site (I am a little late in this reply, its what happens when you don't log in for about a month). I just wanted to say to never, ever give up. I have three ideas for stories rolling around in my head, and am currently working only on one, but as Terry Brooks said in his book, "Sometimes the Magic Works", good ideas for a plot are the hardest things sometimes to come by. I am not saying to try to work on three different pieces at once, that's a short road to insanity. What I am saying is that if, while using your journal, something strikes you as a good idea for a story, to jot it down. You can always go back and develop it later, or it may even show up later in the piece you are currently working. If you don't write it down, you are more likely to forget the nuances that made it such a good idea in the first place.

Secondly, one of the best things I have done is to outline the chapter that I am planning to write before I begin to write it. This can help to keep you "on track." It will help to quell the urge to delve into things that are not necessary to the plot or the story, and can help you to keep rewrites (ugh) to a minimum.

Third, remember that this is your story. You may get some really good critiques on your writing, but be true to how you see the story developing, and how you planned to have it conclude. Don't be rigid, but don't be overly flexible about how you plan to finish your work, because someone else sees a different ending.

Keep going with what you've got, and develop it until your satisfied. I believe that if I make one person smile, or crave more of the story, I have done a good job. Use everything you have at your disposal, including the great ideas already given to you on this site, and you'll get those craving, smiling readers too.

Put your ass in your writing chair on a regular basis

Write characters that are three dimensional and who you both know things about and *want* to know things about.

Remember that just because you know something, the reader doesn't always need to know it.

As much as you love your baby, when someone tells you it has warts, take a good luck.

Research is a good thing.

Using a counter trope a minute is as bad as using a trope a minute.

Study good writing, study bad writing.