Dear Abby Wants Your Advice

My brain has been sucked dry by a boring manuscript--I agreed to do a second read for one of my colleagues, because the ms. was getting a lot of interest and sounded interesting--but 150 pages in, I still didn't feel like much of anything had happened.  Ecch.

But alas, "boring" is not the subject of this blog.  Writing is.  I was talking with my husband, who is writing a novel (well, he's researching...but let's just say that's been going on for a while now), and it made me think about a question I often get, namely, do I want to write books of my own?  I always say no, because a) it's really hard and b) people are mean to you.  But because I don't have experience with the writing process from that side of the desk, I don't have much advice for the DH about moving from "research" to "write the damn book already."

So if you were giving one piece of advice to a newbie novelist, what would it be?  What was the most helpful thing someone told you when starting out?  Do you think there's a right time to concern oneself with the business aspects of publishing?  Is it possible that "seeing how the sausage is made" can be a deterrent to writing?