The Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

Which is why my first instinct was to applaud your post.

However. In thirty years as a professional novelist, I've taught a lot of classes and workshops for would-be writers, and the single thing I've found most upsetting and wrong-headed about them, the thing that's driven me to refuse to do them anymore, is that the would-be writers focus on the wrong things. They focus too small. They look at word choice and sentence structure and fine shades of characterization, instead of "Is this a cool story?"

The result is thousands of would-be writers with pretty darn good technical skills turning out competently-written, highly polished stories that are just plain boring.

And lots of them get cranky when those stories don't sell. They accuse agents and editors and publishers of suppressing new writers. They look for shortcuts. They cozy up to editors hoping that a personal connection will earn them a sale. They go to workshop after workshop, further honing their already-adequate technical skills, thinking that if they could just get a little better they'd make it. They look for that Big Idea that will sell their story. They want to know the secret to selling.

And they look at the numbers and think it's all a big lottery, and if they just stick with it eventually they'll get lucky.

But that isn't how it works.

The thing is, there really is a secret to getting published -- write stuff people want to read -- but even the people who can do it don't know how it's done, or how to teach it to anyone else.