I've already approached the 'why write?' question. I know why I wanted to write science fiction, but there's a more pertinent 'why' right here: why write this mini-blog?

The main reason is because I was asked to. People wanted to know what I thought about writing. 'What do I know?' I wailed, reluctant to step up (see 'Who do you think you are?'). 'I've got one novel, a load of web-based articles and a couple of unproduced screenplays to my name - I'm hardly an authority.' What came back was; 'That's the point, you can tell people what your are learning.' Oh, OK then.

One thing I'm sure of is you have to do a significant amount of your learning in public. You don't only have to write every day, you have to publish regularly and often. You have to work towards producing finished prose that will be read by others, by people who have no idea who you are or what you are doing. You can hand-write your work and give it out on street corners or you can publish on the net and let people around the world trip over it and respond to it, repeat it, trash it or steal it. Most importantly you must get to a point where you decide that something has reached a good enough stopping point for you to press 'publish'. Then you can read your work through a stranger’s eyes and start to learn what the craft is about.