[wallflower]

Repost but Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the best treatise on writing (and by extension, creative expression) I think I've ever read. Here are some excerpts - I believe its worthwile reading the entire essay many times:

"I often hear people say, 'I’m not good enough yet to be published.' That’s quite possible. Probable, even. All I’m saying is: Let someone else decide that. Magazines, editors, agents. They all employ young people making $22,000 a year whose job it is to read through piles of manuscripts and send you back letters telling you that you aren’t good enough yet: LET THEM DO IT. Don’t pre-reject yourself. That’s their job, not yours. Your job is only to write your heart out, and let destiny take care of the rest."

"There are heaps of books out there on How To Get Published. Often people find the information in these books contradictory. My feeling is -- of COURSE the information is contradictory. Because, frankly, nobody knows anything. Nobody can tell you how to succeed at writing (even if they write a book called 'How To Succeed At Writing') because there is no WAY; there are, instead, many ways. Everyone I know who managed to become a writer did it differently. sometimes radically differently. "

http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/writing.htm

[MaysonL]

Robert Heinlein's "On the Writing of Speculative Fiction" ranks pretty highly up there. Starts off with the old Kipling quote:

  There are nine and sixty ways
  Of constructing tribal lays
  And every single one of them is right!

and ends up with his rules (which he describes as "business habit")

1. You must write.

2. You must finish what you write.

3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.

4. You must put it on the market.

5. You must keep it on the market until it sells.

I refrain from posting the Google Books link to the essay: it's much too long, and so is left as an exercise for the reader.