Some help please?

[SeriousLal]

I have a burning desire to be as good as those pro-authors/novelist dudes. I've looked through consice dictionaries, thesauruses, wrote many stories/things and read many books for the past eight years yet I am still unsure of myself. Can someone tell me how I can exercise my strong areas and strengthen my weak areas? Thx..

[Ryffnah]

I have a burning desire to be as good as those pro-authors/novelist dudes. I've looked through consice dictionaries, thesauruses, wrote many stories/things and read many books for the past eight years yet I am still unsure of myself. Can someone tell me how I can exercise my strong areas and strengthen my weak areas? Thx..

Have you shared your work with any other people?  It can be very difficult to get a good idea of how well one's own stories are working without running them past some outside pairs of eyes.  A critique group can be very useful for that.  Most critique groups will require that you critique other people's stories in order to get your own stories critiqued.  However, the skills that you can gain from critiquing other people's stories can actually be very useful for learning to improve your own.

Also, the Furry Writers' Guild website has a page devoted to listing resources for exactly this kind of situation:  http://www.furrywritersguild.com/editing-and-critique-1

[Kaloth]

Additionally one thing that has been told to me that I think has helped my writing almost as much as critiquing and being critiqued, is writing every day. I make a goal to write 1000 words every day, usually it's not on one single coherent story, but it still helps me learn.