Hoping To Be Author Some Day! Any Tips Until Then?

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My imagination and creativity is about all that is good about me career wise and I've always loved books and want to make my own.

I can't draw to save my life and my writing is passable but not nearly good enough to make a book worthy of being published, I'm seventeen so I have plenty of time to get better. What I want to know is if anybody has any tips for me or if there is a place I can go on the internet if I ever need help? Are there any low grade jobs a seventeen year old could take that deals with writing?

Read about writing. Take a creative writing course. Get a bunch of DVD's on screenwriting (even if you prefer writing prose, knowing about structure and subtext and such can improve your writing quite a bit). But most important of all, write a lot. Keep writing. Even if it's not perfect, it's still practice. And read the old stuff you've written, analyse it. Figure out what works and what doesn't, and keep those things in mind when you write your next thing. Just keep writing and reading and writing and reading and you're likely to get better and better. And all the while doing this, keep a huge project growing in the back of your head - the masterpiece you'll write one day when you've honed your craft.
Oh, and read a lot of the kind of stuff you would like to write (analyse it and feel the rhythm) and some of the stuff you wouldn't like to write (to get a feel of what to avoid).

don't listen to the guy above me - just write and write and write and write. creative writing courses won't help.

Read as much great literature as you can.

Also, learn all that you can about topics that interest you. For example, history. So that your novels will make complete historical sense (if you decide to write historical novels).

There are a many possible tips, but let mine be to avoid unnessary words. Comb your writing for phrases and words that add no meaning to your sentences (the exception is dialogue). Have a preference for anglo-saxon words over words with latin antecedants. Avoid hackneyed phrases and words ruined by overuse ('weird'). Avoid business English which, among other sins, loves to make adverbs from nouns by adding 'wise' on the end ('careerwise'). And above all, read the essay by George Orwell titled "Politics and the English Language".

AN EXAMPLE OF UNNECESSARY WORDS AND BUREAUCRATIC ENGLISH:

"As patient advocates, we serve as both catalyst and convener to promote efficient health care quality evaluation and improvement by working collaboratively with patients, physicians, other providers, purchasers, government groups and other health care stakeholders."

This is a long sentence of amazing, but not unusual, vacuity. Its meaning, if it has one, can be stated in 14 words:

We are patient advocates who seek to improve health care by working with everyone.

I might add --proofread what you write!

Never start anything with 'it was a dark and stormy night'...

You're 17, probably in high school or college. Get on the local paper, write for the yearbook. Listen, take advice, get experience. Find what you like to write about, and write what you know. Go to Fanfic sites (for example, Fanfic dot net) for examples of how not to write... Actually, go there anyway, and see what you find interesting. You're eventually going to specialize in something, and maybe it can help you figure out what that is

Buncha cliche`, but they wouldn't be cliche` if there wasn't an element of truth in them...

Why do people always neglect to mention lit mags? Literary magazines and journals exist specifically for new writers to publish their poetry and short stories!

Please do yourself a favor and start with short stories instead of attempting novels at the outset. Get lots of opinions on your work, edit your drafts, and submit them with the hopes of valuable feedback rather than expectations of publication.

If you're unfamiliar with lit mags, check a local public or college library which often archives classic issues. The more you've read a particular zine, the better idea you'll have of what content they're looking for.

Finally, once you've been published in enough zines, editors and publishers will begin contacting you about your writing. They'll be much more interested in reading your manuscripts once they've seen you're publishable. Very few publishers are willing to read through novel-length scripts written by unknown names - they just don't have the time to read everything that gets sent in.

For the fledgling science-fiction writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. maintains a website where you can find information and resources. I don't know for certain, but I imagine similar help would exist for other writing genres.

George Orwell's essay, as mentioned by cagerattler, is widely available on the net, and is definitely worth a read.

If you can't afford college, just go downtown on weekdays and find an angry old hobo to listen to for an hour and a half. The experience will be largely the same.

Read read read read. Write write write. Find yourself a good critic or two.

Edit: I realise that may sound vague, but it's basically practice makes (almost) perfect.

Always start with "It was a dark and stormy night, there was a gunshot, a scream,"

Write thirty pages of the worst, and dump it in a dumpster far from home late at night.

I never get it till after doing it wrong, characters take time to introduce themselves, you can give them traits, but keep knowing them and they will become real people, who can write their own lines.

They are not an action figure, giving the same response in all situations, they are one way at the office, and another when talking to their dog, kid, wife, it is catching the facets that makes it full and real.

Write lots of really bad stuff, go on, you know you want to!

Describe things, "Before him on the table was a.... he saw that it had a deep cultural meaning beyond it's common existance. Things, their relation to other things, to where a few short sentances can bring a vision of a time, a neighborhood,, and all the people that live there.

There is a background needed to tell a story, where are we? What is the meaning of this place? Then a letter came for Harry. Some is where they come from, which gives meaning to where they go.

Edit yourself harshly, it is about percentage of good stuff, do not accept less.