Keeping Up with Your Career
Traci Kenworth
Are you keeping up with your career? Do you research new findings? Study where you’ve been and where you’re going? I think it’s important to do so. Not only do you stay fresh, but it brings more to the bargaining table. Never stop learning is a promise of mine to myself. Each day, I’m amazed by something just found out, confirmed, or added depth to. Take writing, for instance. We need to keep browsing over those English manuals, learning our craft from the masters, and reading to discover who we are in relation to other authors.
Right now I’m learning how to be a Breakout Novelist from Donald Maas. I’m re-reading an English textbook, working on punctuation, revising etc. from several different craft books. Each time I go over them, I learn something, or see something different. I have two shelves of craft books and add to them here and there. Do I need them all? Probably not, but I tend to hang onto them for the day insight will come. The next time I flip through the pages could be the time a gem falls out that will help me with my writing.
And isn’t that what it’s all about? Helping yourself advance? Helping your employer, agent, editor, see that your capable of growing in the marketplace. It’s imperative that we not become stagnant. It cuts off the flow of ideas if we do. No matter where you are along your journey, I encourage you to take the chance to grasp something you never have before. Go back to school, pick up that book, talk to someone and learn what their life is like, it might make for an interesting character in your book. So take care to always keep learning, no matter how unimportant it might seem, it enriches your thinking, opens new doors.
What are some of your ways to learn new things? Do you find it helps? Do you agree we should never stop growing in terms of our lives?
Where Genres Collide Traci Dowe YA Author 
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