Writing Advice

So, I've been asked enough times for writing advice that I feel not so arrogant in posting some here. Especially since, now that people are starting to read Volume One, blogging about Volume Two would be very spoiler-ish, which apparently people get very heated about. Personally, I like spoilers. I mean, I watched Lost from season 6 (which I'm still getting yelled at about). But that doesn't really have anything to do with this post >_>
Here's my number one piece of advice, the most important thing you need to be a writer: Confidence.
Haruki Murakami, my favorite author, has been quoted saying that the most important thing you need is talent. I mean, I guess that's important. Not as important as confidence, though. Without confidence, even if you're brilliant otherwise, you're never going to convince anyone to read your story. No one will believe it. You've got to take your plot and characters and stick to them. You have to believe in them. Okay, I know that sounds really corny. But it's true. You can write something absolutely absurd, and your readers will believe you and be on board with you as long as you have confidence. Besides, second guessing yourself means you'll never write past the first page of your story, you'll feel so bad about it. Trust me, this is how I felt when I first started writing Ishiki. But then I said, screw it, this is my story, I've just got to get words down.
Which leads me to the second most important part of writing: Editing.
Lucky for me, I have the ability to take writing workshops at school that taught me how to edit by giving me tons of my classmates' stories to work with. But you can do something like this with friends or online. Fictionpress.com is a particularly good site. Editing other people's work makes you more aware of mistakes you might make in your own. Always a good thing.
The best way to edit, in my opinion, is to read your story out loud to yourself. That's when you see little errors, but you can also control the flow of the piece better. Reading aloud takes a lot of time (I know, this is how I edited Ishiki) but it's WORTH IT! Just try it. Just one time. You'll see what I mean.
Another tip, use Microsoft's spell/grammar check, but not Mac's. Mac's sucks. It doesn't fix anything and is absolutely worthless. And I'm not just saying this because 'I'm a PC', however much I love my netbook.
Well, I hope this has been some helpful advice. I'll post more when I think of them. But for now, the new episode of True Blood is calling :)

Ishiki Art and..... Discounts?!?!?

Okay, so first of all, I want to make the announcement that Amazon.com has discounted my book to 30% off, which makes my book about $10! TEN DOLLARS! That's mad cheap, right? So now there are no excuses. You've just got to buy it. Buy it with your school books and get super saver shipping. I mean, Ishiki is cheaper than a NYC movie ticket now! Apparently, Amazon does this to all of their books. I just found out yesterday. I'm pretty excited about it, as you can tell.
I started Volume Two this week. I've been going to Starbucks with one of my good friends who is writing a book too. I really want to put up the six or so pages I have so far, but it's all spoiler-y and I know some of you haven't finished the book yet.
Now, something I've wanted to do for a while is post up some character artwork I've drawn over the years. Most of these were done two years ago. And hey, I never said I was a good artist. I'm not. I can only draw cute sorts of things. If any of you talented people want to sketch up some of my characters, send it to me at ishiki@gmail.com because I really do want to see my characters drawn well lol.
Well, I set up a DeviantArt account to post my sketches. Check it out:
tk-anez.deviantart.com