The Vorkosigan Companion - Lillian Stewart Carl [37]
A large vocabulary and a sense of where words come from, their roots and histories, help keep the writer from going astray. It can take time and a lot of reading to develop this kind of ear, but any newbie can use a dictionary. A quick dictionary check of any made-up word to be sure one hasn't accidentally duplicated a term already taken will help prevent, say, inadvertently naming one's major fantasy character after an airplane part. (True story. Not one of mine, happily.) Checking that one hasn't used some absurd word in a foreign language can be harder, although an Internet search may help here. Ursula Le Guin's essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," although it applies only to a partial range of story types, is recommended reading to sensitize one to the issues.
When you finish book one, don't just sit down and wait for it to sell; start on book two. Novel publishers want writers who have proven that they are capable of doing continuing work, and at a steady rate, not one-book-wonders. And your second book, or your third, or fourth, may actually be the one that breaks the barriers for you. If you're lucky, as I was, you'll be able to clean out your manuscript drawer then and there (remember, publishers want more than one book, at least until your books tank and then they don't want any). Also, writing the second or later books may teach you more about writing, and more about how to improve your early work, than getting caught in an endless loop of revising the same material and rehashing the same problems.
Right revising is a most excellent thing. Perpetual revising that eats new work is not.
My best advice to aspiring writers is to write what you are passionate about, rather than trying to write "to the market." After all, if you try to write what you think others will like, and its flops, it will have been an absolute waste of your time; worse, if it succeeds, people will want you to write more of the same, not what your heart is set upon. If you love your work, there is more of a chance that others will too, and you are more likely to produce your best—which will create its own market, the mad gods of luck and publishing willing.
So, this ambles roundaboutly over to the next set of hard tasks, not terribly closely related: marketing one's tale.
I landed my first novel sale to Baen without an agent, but I wouldn't recommend this course of action to a new writer. I did it the hard way—wrote seven published books and won my first Nebula. Then I found my agent. On the bright side, she is a very good one.
Besides checking books on writing and Net-based sources, which have grown far more abundant these days (if varied in utility), if a new writer is looking for an agent it certainly can't hurt to attend the larger science fiction conventions, such as Worldcon or especially World Fantasy Convention, where a high concentration of agents and editors appear, and better still, appear on panels, where you can actually ask them your questions. Beyond that, it's just the usual slog of query letters and partials-and-outlines, as described in the many how-to books. If you have a published friend, you can sometimes get an introduction to their agent, but beware that you're putting your friend's professional reputation on the line when you do this. Your offering had better justify it.
Keep in mind, agents are not, normally, writing instructors. (Some agents do critique their clients' work, some don't. Mine mostly doesn't. It's not her job. Wrestling with French tax forms, or Bulgarian pirates, or publishers' accounting