Best writing advice EVER?

Not from me, however there are a few established authors willing to give that question a spin. Over at SF Signal are the collected answers of a number of authors, Ben Bova through to Robert Silverburg, in a little thing SF Signal calls a 'Mind Meld'. I suspect they borrowed the term from somewhere. ;)

The best advice I personally received came during a writing course conducted by Paula Johanson.
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She asked each of us if we wanted to become writers. Then, after a number of affirmative responses, she produced her magic wand (it was invisible!) and waved it over our heads, pronouncing the magic words "Yew Err Wryters". (Only it sounded more like "You are writers"). Then she said "Ok, that's done. Now there's nothing stopping you. Time to get started."

The point is: There really is nothing stopping you, or anyone from being a writer. Even Stephen Hawking writes and he arguably faces challenges most of us can't conceive of. Much of the advice in the SF Signal article is similar. Just write, don't fret or worry too much about it, just get the words on the paper. Once they are down then you can go nuts on the editing or submitting, but get the story out first.

Yesterday morning I found myself unable to finish my story for my writing group. It was due in the evening and I was stalled only a couple of thousand words in. I had already revised the beginning twice and changed the whole story in my head a dozen times.

In the end I had to produce something and felt like I'd made a mess of this story. So I put that story aside and sat down to start writing something new, something fresh. For the rest of the day I wrote and by the evening I had a story. It was a complete simple piece that didn't even need much editing to make it ready to send to the group. The key was I stopped questioning myself, my ideas or my story and instead just wrote.