John Scalzi on:

What is publishing -

4. "Writing competence is a learnable skill -- and therefore most people are capable of being competent writers. Writing competently isn't rocket science; it requires the knowledge of certain grammatical rules, which are less difficult than, say, calculus, followed by lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of writing practice. Yes, some writers are gifted by God or nature to be great writers and have that great ineffable thing that makes their writing sing without any effort at all. The odds that person is you are slim."

To read the rest, go here.

He also gives us a list of Ten things about Literary Rejection -

4. "I read each story until it no longer works for me. If that happens before the end of the story, I'm going to reject the piece. I don't usually know from piece to piece what's going to work for me. Like pornography or a good melon, I know entertaining work when I see it. But I guarantee you if you think there's a point at which your story lags, I will, too. Don't give me the opportunity to decide your piece doesn't work. If the story works all the way through that doesn't mean it's accepted, but it does mean it'll make it into the pool of stories I'd like to buy."

To read the other 6 items listed, go here.

And because I've never been known to have pity on horses deceased, here's John's opinion on the whole writers blogging thing: Scalzi the Blog Killer, (scroll up), as an addendum to my blog post yesterday.

I'm chillin on the writing a bit. Whatever is hampering me is bigger than blogging (although, that would have been a nice crutch) I'm not excited about my current wip, or any of the story I ideas I have on file or have come up with recently. Furthermore, I'm not enjoying much of what I read lately. I've started and stopped half a dozen books and, with a pitiful few exceptions, nothing is really holding my interest--or enticing it for that matter--never mind sucking me in or holding me entranced (which is how I prefer my reading to go).