A few words

In a world where 'taanstafl' is pretty much a religion, the fact that someone can go through substantial effort to set up a site like Storycrafter and pay to park the domain and for bandwidth and NOT CHARGE FOR MEMBERSHIP is an amazing gift.

So for one I'd like to thank The Founder for the site's existence where I've spent a good portion of the last 5 years or so of my life, if not longer.

I'd also like to add a few words of advice to those who are new or having difficulties here.

1) Quality over Quantity - Take your time. This is StoryCRAFTER. We are crafting stories, not slapping things together. What is worth more: A hand-made, lovingly crafted Bentley, or a mass produced assembly-line produced Hyundai? Take your time and show effort. That effort will be rewarded. Either by compliments on your work or by folks seeing that you are trying and helping you to get better. Furthermore, something that often escapes the notice of new writers is that you get out of a story what you put in, the harder you work to make your characters believable and your prose inspiring or insightful or otherwise affecting the more satisfied with your work you will be and thus happier with the story and your role here.
2) Reputation matters - You are not anonymous once you begin writing here. Your work will follow you. See Item 1.
3) Patience - Do not expect to be able to join 15 active stories instantly upon registering and again why would you? See Item 1.
4) Imagination - Avoid concepts that have been beaten to death and characters that are clichéd. Characterization is tricky, take your time and at least try to CRAFT a character that means something both to you and to the reader. This takes time and is yet another example of Item 1 at work.

Quality

Read Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values if you haven't. It is a life-changing work. I cannot recommend it highly enough.