Five Important Things Writing Professionally Taught Me

Writing, like any form of art, takes on different meaning as it's used in different ways. Journalism, marketing, fiction writing; all of these different styles tend to mean something different to those within the community of the written word. Journalism is useful but corruptible. Marketing is a sell-out, a place for people to go when they're getting started or don't know how to move forward. Fiction writing, it seems, is the purest form of the craft for many; I know that's what I used to think.

Writing professionally has changed the way I think about writing, the way I write, and so much more about my life. For all the rest of you who live with the near drug-addiction-like pull of words in your life, here are the five things I've learned about writing since I started doing it professionally.

No Form of Writing is Better Than Another
This is something you learn really quickly when you've got hands in multiple cookie jars. My day job sees me writing a huge volume of marketing material for a wide variety of businesses. My freelance work has me ghost-writing creative pieces and translating work from language A to language B. In this type of setup, you quickly realize that no form of writing is "better", any more noble, than another. In the end, writing well is all that matters.

You Really Do Get Better
When I first started doing this whole thing, I wondered if I'd ever get better. Will I ever understand how to use a semi-colon? Will I become better at tying beginning and end together? The answer, it turns out, was a resounding yes. It might take your editor giving you a little tough love, but in the end, you will be much better than you were. As far as I can tell, this part never ends.

You Can't Trust Writers
Writers of all types make their living off telling a stories, real or constructed. Even non-fictional work is presented in a light that best suits the author's story. When you spend enough time weaving threads together into your own narrative, you quickly find that you can do that just as well on the page as you can off. The more evil writers, the Bill O'Reillys of the world, will take full advantage of this superpower. Though I hate to say it, you can't trust writers.

A Good Writer Can Do Something with Nothing
For a long time, I held the belief that it was the subject that gave a finished piece its pizzazz. In the end, though, it's what's written around the subject. Having written now on everything from ramen to bow-ties are cool (redacted so I don't violate any NDAs), I can say that anything can be made interesting when a good writer takes it on.

Payment Pales in Comparison to the Craft
In the earliest days of getting paid for words, I thought that I should just pump out whatever I could, as fast I could. Eventually, unless it is just a job to you, this sort of mentality fades. Instead of focusing on how much you're getting paid for something, you focus on how well you're doing something. (Note: Translation is an absolute exception to this rule) This mentality might be why so many of us are broke for a while.

What have you learned through your own writing experience?