Manatea and Coffee with me.: Tips and sips

Today I'm sipping on some tea and playing around with my writing.
I wanted to talk about writing for a little bit. I've found a lot of tips for aspiring authors but I have some of my own.
I'm a new writer so I only have my own experiences but I think that might be enough for this.
I started my book in December of last year (2012) I finished it I think mid February (2013) and I thought I had it all. It was the first book I'd ever finished, and I thought it was amazing. I went back and redid things here and there but over all I thought it was amazing as is so as soon as I could I bought a 'how to' book on how to get published and then just plowed right into querying every agent I could find.... then a few months later the rejections came....by the tons.
It was heart breaking but I will say, all those tips I got about setting your book aside after you finish it and then going back and looking at it, well that's what I should have done. Actually it's what I ended up doing just by circumstance because I was so busy making out queries I didn't bother reading my work. After all the rejections I sat down (This is now September when I did) and actually looked at my story, I found soooo many issues and problems. I became discouraged and pushed it away...but I kept thinking about it.
I started sending chapters to friends to read, and tried finding a critique group.
I had long talks with close friends that I trusted with my work, most of which my husband who had good insights.
Always I was thinking about it, stuff I liked stuff I didn't. I like watching movies based on books and seeing how they look and I think about my story. The descriptions, the feelings, the scenery, what did I leave out? Finally I started making headway, all those parts I wasn't sure about but didn't want to go to the trouble to change I started thinking about and started changing.
I'm in the middle of rewrites right now and some chapters I'm completely writing over and going in a completely different direction than I originally planned, and my book is getting better.
I found you need time to think about your story, some times the fingers just run away with you while your typing and you need to go back and look things over.
Also READ, read a lot. Read stuff that has to do with your genre that you're writing in but don't just read that, read everything. If you have a male or female protagonist and you want to 'flesh' them out and make them deeper, read books with a main character that your protagonist could aspire to. If you want to flesh out your villain (Which I suggest, you don't want a two dimensional villain to go up against your 4 dimensional protagonist) read books with villains you like, villains you want your villain to be like.
If I was to sum up how to write I would say: