I see. Maybe you could play around with the Spread / Size of your Outer Glow, usually you can find something that looks right by just playing around. Adding a bevel&emboss texture could also improve things. I really recommend the "Saderan" tutorial. It produces nice oceans.

What's your problem in lettering? Where to place the names or what fonts to use? Because both depend strongly on what you want your map to look like: modern, medieval, fairy-tale... Some time ago I downloaded a bunch of free fonts so I always have one that fits. For example here and here, the latter being extremely useful as symbols for cities etc. Hope that helps!