I go a fair number of places on the Internet to hobnob with fellow writers, or to seek out advice on how to improve my art and craft treatment of writing, or even to learn more about the business of writing. I don’t always bookmark these sites, nor do I track my browsing history very carefully.

A few weeks ago I came upon a post, or maybe it’s a website, titled Top Ten Tuesdays, run by a man named Larry [Something]. Without searching for the site again, I’m not sure but that it might actually be titled StoryFix. On March 14, 2011, he had a guest post by a writer named Victoria Mixon. Or possibly she’s an agent or editor, I can’t tell from the printout I’m looking at. Victoria’s guest post was titled “The Bootstrapping Writer—The Secret at the Core of Competency”.

Her post begins with these words: “Writing is about growing up.” She then proceeds to describe the differences between a professional writer (which I assume she means grown up) and an amateur writers (which I assume she means not grown up). She has ten items related to the writer’s life where they can demonstrate professionalism vs. amateurism. I’m going to discuss some of these in a series of short-ish posts to the blog. But I’m only going to concentrate on the professional side. I think the amateur side will be understood.

Writing: Professional: “The professional aspiring writer approaches the writing as a craft, a complex, challenging set of skills they must develop as fully as humanly possible in the short lifespan they’ve been allotted, in the context of art—that extraordinary impulse to put into words aspects of life that have never been given words before.”

Is that possible? We’ve been told there is nothing new under the sun. So how can a writer say things that haven’t been said. We’ve been told there are really only three plots: man against nature, man against man, man against self. So how is it possible to create something new?

And yet, this is exactly what readers want, and what writers have to strive to achieve. Being able to achieve it is the difference between the amateur and the professional. I hope I’m achieving it.