Check it out!

If you haven't ever been to this website, go now. Right now.
It is a website for amature writers, giving them tips and ideas on how to improve their skills and be better at what they do. The website helps you in getting you ready and prepared to effectively write, edit, and eventually lead up to every writers dream... to publish.
Go now to http://www.writersdigest.com/

On this website I found some really cool tips for creative writing: (My favorite kind:))

"1. Watch out for subtle wordiness. We’ve all been taught to eliminate redundancies in our writing, but it takes constant vigilance to catch the most elusive culprits—those that go beyond redundancy into pleonasm.
Pleonasm is the use of words unnecessary for clear expression. Here are some other common offenders to watch for:

• advanced warning
• basic fundamentals
• circulated around
• close proximity
•close scrutiny
• constant nagging
• downward descent
• exact replica
• exact same
• new discovery
• top priority

Isn’t that a great list for more concise writing?

"2. Don’t use a long (read: complicated) word where a short (read: simple) word will do. Here’s an interesting analysis of why less really is more when it comes to your writing:

In 10 novels I studied, I found bestselling novelists consistently use shorter words than non-bestsellers. It’s one of the reasons their writing reads at a faster pace. The samples from the bestsellers I studied averaged 4.21 characters a word. Other samples I analyzed for comparison averaged about a full character more. In the worst corporate writing samples I studied, it’s common for samples to average more than 6 characters per word. In academic journals, writing is so dense as to be unreadable at more than 7 letters per word.

"3. Redefine how you think of writer’s block. I’ve never heard anyone define it in quite this way before:

“Writer’s block is real but intangible. It is a momentary lack of anything to say that gives rise to the fear that you have nothing more to say—ever. … Coming to the end of speech can be a moment of blessed silence, and ought to be welcomed when it comes rather than featured. It isn’t the lack of something to say or write at the moment that is the problem, but the fear generated by the story that this present quiet will extend through the rest of your life.”

Sort of makes it sound easy to eliminate that anxiety, doesn’t it?

"4. Write more by setting a smaller daily goal. If you’re one of those writers who struggles with finding time to write, here are some convincing reasons why this approach might work for you:

• It’s easier to find smaller bites of time than long, uninterrupted periods.
• Repetition strengthens habits.
• Repetition also builds momentum.
• If it’s only for 15 minutes, you can justifiably postpone other tasks. You can reverse procrastination—instead of procrastinating the start of your writing, you procrastinate following the distractions that used to keep you from writing.
• You can envision letting go of all the other things competing for your attention and allow yourself to really focus, because it’s for only 15 minutes. This kind of focus, where we get lost in the writing, is one of the biggest joys of writing.

"5. Don’t abandon your other passions to focus on writing. I love the way Austin Kleon puts this in Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative (Workman):

“Don’t throw any of yourself away. If you have two or three real passions, don’t feel like you have to pick and choose between them. Don’t discard. Keep all your passions in your life. This is something I learned from playwright Steven Tomlinson. Tomlinson suggests that if you love different things, you just keep spending time with them. ‘Let them talk to each other. Something will begin to happen.’ The thing is, you can."

So there you go... a few writing tips from a great website... just to get you started off on the right foot:)