Advice & Tricks for my fellow Writers

You can take Writing courses, and I recommend such, but always check them out first, make sure you are getting what you want and need for your money.

Study already-published works by your favorite authors, or just your favorite books. Another good route is to study the works found by assorted authors in anthologies, then you can borrow and learn from the technique evidenced by more than a single author.
BUT, Studying such is tricky, as you will find yourself slipping into READING. ;) It takes a while to learn how to Study and Learn while Reading, but stick with it.

Your first-draft, DO NOT try for Perfect as it won't happen. There's not a single writer in history who ever achieved a Perfect Finished Work on a First-Draft.
DO NOT worry about your First-Draft being messy, sloppy, spelling-errors and all that--it's supposed to be messy, sloppy, and such. The MAIN thing is just focus on getting the Idea and thoughts down. Think of the First-Draft as raw mineral ore. Editing comes later, and that is when the Refining occurs.

Editing is not that hard. The hard part is the First Draft, editing is just adding new ideas you've had, fixing working, spelling and such, adding details or subtracting them, and sculpting the Raw Ore into the final refined form you want.
Editing takes more than one pass, think of it like how expensive car paintjobs are done, they are built up in layers until they look miles deep, each editing pass is a 'layer'.

Don't get caught in the eternal-editing trap. When you feel you've done it to be best you can, then stop. It's like the Statue of David...if one more chisel blow had been made, it would have ruined the work.