It's kind of like how you get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. I do a lot of sprint writing, especially over on Tumblr where I have people give me prompts and I write either short scenelets or three-sentence stories (which really sharpen your writing skills). I would recommend doing that as a meme on your journal, actually. Tell people to give you a pair of characters, and an AU universe, and write a three-sentence story for them. You'd be surprised by how much it helps.

And you should defffffinitely come to St. Louis! I mean, the City Museum is awesome, but we've also got the Arch, the Central Library just opened, Union Station is still cool, you haven't lived until you've eaten toasted ravioli, I love the shops down in the Loop, and seeing a show at the Fox just makes everything awesome. It's my favorite building in the world.

And your mental image is making me giggle. Giant worms are hysterical, I don't care what people say.