Part of finding a mentor to push you further is to demonstrate how far you've gone on your own. What have you learned already? What do you think are your weaknesses?

You have to show the potential mentor that it's worth his time to help you.

Re: Oxin

How about you be my mentor instead? What do you think are
the three most important concepts to understand as a writer?

If the world as we know it ends tomorrow, all written records
are destroyed, and you are the only writer left. How would
you go about teaching the rest to write?

I checked Oxin's posting history and discovered the mentoring threads at the Help Wanted section. I don't think Oxin would have a problem finding a mentor because there seem to be quite many mentors available. This forum is full of helpful people.

The Golden Rule of writing is to understand what the audience value in your work.

I am re-learning writing by starting small. The principle is that if your work is valuable to the reader, you could distill your idea into one sentence. That sentence alone should be able to deliver your message or to hook the audience. When you can proof to yourself that the value is there, then you write the one paragraph version. After that, the one page version.

This skill is useful regardless whether you are writing an article or a novel. It starts and keeps the reader reading.

Similar to GhostKnight's concept of keeping a notebook, I wish I had always kept my best piece of writing handy, so that I could focus on beating it everytime. Since I didn't keep it, I can only focus on beating what I last wrote everytime.

If you need another brain to pick I'm always available as well even if its just needing someone to critique some writing.

ClockworkIMP@gmail.com