Any tips or tricks of the trade?

There's some great info in this thread: LINK.

Grits beat me to it. Go to that link. It is invaluable.

Most useful books I've read to teach you about writing are On Writing by Stephen King, Into the Woods: a Five Act Journey into Story by John Yorke and Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. Two other useful guides are the transcripts of Arther Quiller Couche's 'Q' lectures (though they're not easy to get hold of, though ebay may be your firend) and Aristotle's Poetics, though you should be wary of taking all of Aristotle's guides of what to include in a story as gospel. There's plenty of room to tell a good story with what he says a story should be made up, but it's certainly not the only right way to do it, not by a long shot.

As well as that, read. A lot. And read a lot of everything. Include the classic authors; Shakespeare, Chekov, Poe, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Dumas, the Brontes and all of those as well. They've stuck around because they're good at what they do, and there's a lot they can teach you.

I'm going to start writing in the morning but it's late now.

NO EXCUSES! XD

but it was late!

I'm going to do world building writing.

This gunna be good!

Read mediocere.

I like to keep my mind open to real-life situations and people who intrigue me. Situations in real-life sometimes trigger inspirations inside my head, and I'll often wind up working some of these inspirations into my stories, sometimes subconsciously. Having a daughter who is still in that cute 'story phase' (she still likes it when I read her stories) also helps. She'll be in this stage until she's about 10, and then she'll probably grow out of it. But for now, a lot of the things I do to make stories more lively to her get used as I tell stories here.

Go for walks. Go to a park, maybe. Listen to the people you pass by. There might be a couple arguing, and you'll catch a part of this argument. I'll usually mull on this if I'm walking alone. I'll mull it over in my head, and wonder how this argument came to be. Again, it's a creative side of the brain that's getting stimulated. You'd be surprised how little things like this can make a difference.

Learn from our professionlal..Mr treydog! read his marvellous stories...get inspiration..and there you go! All I ever created was inspired from this great great writer!