Believe it or not, there are some common writerly recommendations that Rune Skelley agrees with.

1. Read a lot, and read outside of your favorite genre.
2. Write every day.
3. Create a pleasant and functional workspace, a place you will want to go.
4. Revise. Revise. Revise. Writing = rewriting.
5. Document your process, whatever it is.
6. Plan how you’ll answer “So what’s your book about?” (you know they’ll ask)
7. Don’t go it alone.

That last one bears expansion.

There’s a romanticized notion of novel writing as a noble, solitary quest for beauty. Bullshit. Everybody needs a support system, and for a project as deep and wide as crafting a novel you bet you’ll need help. It doesn’t have to mean a coauthor, and even if you do collaborate with a partner you’ll (both) find needs for further resources.

Critique groups are a fantastic way to get feedback about your work, from fellow writers, your peers. In a properly structured critique session, no one is going to pull any punches. Their job is to help you find and fix the problems with your text, and unlike a spouse or a parent or a sibling or a coworker, they aren’t putting a relationship at risk by being blunt.

Beta readers serve a different function. Rather than advising on craft, they give you an impression of how your target audience will respond. After hearing from them in their own words about what worked and what didn’t, follow up with a more structured questionnaire to make sure the points you’re concerned about get addressed.

Internet research is seductive in its convenience, but there’s no substitute for sitting with an expert and digging really deep into her particular specialty. Build a network of people you can consult with on technical matters, be they scientific, medical, historical, psychological, culinary, etc. Take a look at the acknowledgements section of a Neal Stephenson book sometime!