Unfortunately prose writing, unlike, say, water painting or photography, isn't really something you can do as a hobby. Of course I was crap to begin with, because I'd never done it before and had just been writing for myself, so it took me three years to get my first short story published and five years before Leaving The Light On was published. I ditched two novels on the way. To me novel writing is an imaginative and not an intellectual process. So I spend a lot of time dreaming and making notes before I write anything on the computer.
Short stories are sometimes more ideas-based.
If you want to write straight contemporary fiction, which is the toughest market to get into, it really does help if you have something very unusual to say. You have to give them a 'hook' to sell you on. Genre fiction isn't quite so difficult. As well as fiction I love books about the human condition, evolution and development. Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs And Steel and Matt Ridley's Genome are current favourites.