“Your first million words don’t count.” In other words you have to write a million words to get good.”  

I think this is a great thing to keep in mind in order to keep writing and keep striving to get better (and actually if you keep writing, you will get better).

For poets this leads to another thought that I will keep to myself except for here is to start with rhyming poetry.

Experience success with it. However, try to get better each day as a poet.  Play with the other techniques to at least see if it is for you.  Try to get 1% better each day, and keep working on your poems.  Whether you make an informed choice to write rhyming poetry or not, revise. revise, revise, making it at least 1% better each time.

Rhyming poetry is looked down upon in literary journals. And I don’t often try to write it because it is too easy to be cliche. However, many, many people write it and its great at poetry slams,