Never Stop Learning as a Writer

As I believe I mentioned (perhaps it was on my fan page), I've been taking writing classes for the past couple of weeks, and will do so for several more weeks. Now, you may be asking yourself, with four novels, and multiple short stories published, why would he need to take classes on writing? The answer is simple: Until I reach a point in my career where I can just say "I think I'd like to write another book" and publishers start a bidding war over my un-started novel (or every reader on the planet pre-orders without me writing a word), then I need to keep learning about the craft. And even then, the world will be ever-changing, and there will be new things to learn about the business and craft of writing.

Other things to keep in mind:

- I've gone over my sales numbers previously. Needless to say, they can use a lot of improvement. Part of that is going to be from my ongoing conversations with a marketing strategist, as I mentioned before. But some of that may be related to my writing (despite those who tell me how great it is). So, the classes also serve to help me find out how I could improve. This is something all writers should be striving for, to improve their writing.

- We can all use training in alternate ways of doing things we've done all along. For example, I've always plotted out my stories from beginning to end (even if they don't always follow the plan), and have done this many ways. In our most recent class, a new method (to me, at least) was given for the plot progression which I plan on utilizing in the future, to see how well it work.

So, to recap, authors should always continue to keep learning throughout their career. I hope that you take this advice to hear, and I'd be interested to hear from everyone (via the comments) something they've learned about (either the craft or the business of) writing recently.