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 :)