Writing for Publishing

Everyone knows the saying "Publish or Perish" but does anyone know how to publish? I didn't know, and last night, Dr. Buckley enlightened me.

Here's my interpretation of How to Write a Publishable Research Paper in Economics
1. First, think of a clever idea, preferably something topical to current news and social awareness (i.e. environmental economics or political economics).
2. Develop a mathematical model (90% of the time, it's calculus) that is solvable, applicable and interesting.
3. Cleverly find a data set to use for your mathematical model. This is the big one. It's not really a skill, but luck: finding a set that is complete and manageable. Then it's crunching numbers and crunching more numbers. Remember to account for differences in characteristics (i.e. whether a state is a coastal state).
4. Apply a clever econometric method.
5. Revise, edit and revise.
6. Submit to one journal at a time. If you are accepted, great; add it to your resume. If you are rejected, select another journal and resubmit.

Additional note: you might have a good idea and find that there is no data. And that sucks.

Apparently, you have to be an economist, a statistician, a calculus mathematician and a writer to pull this thing off. I'm already exhausted.