michaelaw/sxc.hu

By Pat Howard

One of my favorite things about writing for a living is that it’s a way to ensure you never stop learning. In my experience, writing requires you to also do a lot of reading. It’s easy, after so many years of reading for various purposes, to forget that you are learning at all when you read, because your brain just naturally begins to parse the information before you.

Reading a daily blog about, by, and for working writers is an obvious way to acquire applicable knowledge, and writing for one ups the ante because it carries a level of responsibility that you are putting something out there that can be of use to people, that they can take something away from when they are finished.

I’m relatively new around here, but that definitely doesn’t mean I haven’t learned anything since becoming a part of The WM Freelance Writers Connection. In fact, one of the biggest lessons I’ve gotten out of this experience is that learning is a two-step process.

You can read these great articles and interviews, collect e-books, and get opinions from everyone you know on your writing career and goals. But gathering the data isn’t enough. Information only has power when you wield it.

Just knowing what to do isn’t enough. You have to do the work. One keystroke at a time, day after day, you have to use what you know, and what you are constantly learning, for it to pay off in a meaningful way. Just as a library doesn’t do any good by keeping its doors locked, your brain stuffed with grammar rules, best practices, and other writing tools can’t make your writing career soar unless you apply it.

Write that query. Make a contact. Beat the deadline. Do the work.

Use what you know. Share it with others. Writers are friendlier than they sometimes get credit for being. Paying it forward, sharing what you’ve figured out, through endless research or the joys and woes of experience, is another way of applying what you’ve learned. It’s what we try to do here every day.