How to Write a Novel

If you follow all the advice on the net about how to write a novel, you would never start. The only consistent advice that I can follow is, just write. Do you plan it, not plan it, create characters, let the characters create themselves? Everybody has a different idea.
I am writing a novel, just writing it. I did a three-day writing workshop recently, and the tutor's advice was to just write, write the crap out, then rewrite. You have to have a novel before you can know you can write one, right?
Any hopeful writers reading this?
My Creative Writing class is a great spur. I have to come up with something to read out 24 weeks of the year, even if I don't feel like it. So I do.
Extending this to any area of life, I believe if you want to be a millionaire/jeweller/painter/screenwriter or anything else, you have to make some steps towards it all the time, and whatever jolts you can give yourself to keep going, just give them. The longer you put it off, the less likely you are to do it.
Feel good advice for today.

More About Free Stories

Giving away free stories is much easier than selling them. Surprise, surprise!
My second give-away booklet was titled Modern Gothic. It's quite a long story, over 6000 words, based on a true story from the world's press about a supposed lesbian blogger who disappeared from her home and was thought to have been kidnapped. 'She' was really a man, who finally 'fessed up. Feminists and political activists were highly critical, but he claimed he was trying to do good.
My story is a development of this. It's too long to post here, but if you want it just ask, and I will email it.
Many copies of this story also left the rack, and now I have a new one to put there. It's called The Husband Whisperer, and you can guess its inspiration.