Doomie,
Seems you have the right attitude which is good, because becoming a good (and published) writer is all about having the write attitude. It is a long road FULL of disappointment. All the stuff you hear about being rejected 100 times before getting published is more or less true. I'm not a professional by any stretch, but it took me about a year AFTER joining AW to get my first paid publication.
I don't know anything about you so I'm just going to stereotype based on the typical Newbie that comes to AW, this may or may not apply exactly to you.
In regards to your question:
... Please feel free to share what you think is necessary to make me a better writer. In the end, isn't what this is all about?
Here are a list of things you should do.
Go to SYW forum
daily and critique (that means read and comment on) at least one story every day. Make sure you read other writers crits as well. This will help you build invaluable relationships with writers. Eventually (after a month or so) you will start to form your own inner circle of writing friends. After about six months, you will have strong relationships that you can count on to help your writing career for years to come IMHO (in my humble opinion). My personal genres are humor, sci-fi/fantasy, and mainstream, though on occasion I go to queries (we all have to query eventually) and Women's romance.
Familarize yourself with the Uncle Jim Thread and read the first 1000 posts (yes the first one thousand posts).
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6710
This thread is worth its weight in gold. I've read about half of the thread. I used to read about 20 minutes per day. In a nutshell, a professional famous writer took it upon himself to educate us on the writing process from writing the first book, common mistakes, what the industry standards are, etc. etc. This thread is pure f**king gold and will shave YEARS off of your learning curve. Took me about a month (20 minutes per day) to get through the 1st 1000 posts. After reading 10 posts you will see the value of it immediately. Read not only his posts but the comments of others.
Go to the Bewares and Background forum and read the stickies (stickies are posts at the top that are always there) about the publishing process
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22
and also make sure you read the first 20 posts of the Publish America thread. They are pros at scamming newbies out of their money. This thread can literally save you thousands of dollars
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33451
After you've critique a few works in SYW, post your chapter one in SYW and see what others have to say (feedback usually takes about a week so be patient)
And work the AW site daily, I probably invest 1 - 2 hrs to this site daily, though now, as an old crusty veteran I probably spend too much time on the non-writing related forums
It takes about 6 months to get a thorough understanding of all that AW can do for you and to become a familiar face around here, and build up your own AW crew. You will notice that you and your 'crew' will grow together and start hitting your goals together (which is exciting). You can also share good news in the Goals and Accomplishment forums and the Rejection Forums.
Back to writing, do you have at least one "How to be a better writer" book? I suggest you by one, doesn't really matter who, several decent books out there.
Also, you need to buy and read Elements of Style by Shrunk and White. That is 88 pages and is arguably the BEST book about writing ever written.
When you start to lose heart (which you will) pop over to both the Goals and Accomplishment forum to see how hard and long your fellow writers had to struggle as well as the Rejection forum.
O.k. that's about all I got. Whew!!! Yes, it is a lot right? But if this writing stuff were easy, everyone would do it.
Good luck and hope you stick around.
BTW, what is your genre?
Mel....