Going back to the Victoria Mixon post on Storyfix, the second item she wrote about that differentiates the professional from the amateur is reading about writing. That is, seeking, finding, ingesting, digesting, and otherwise using advice about writing. While the post was specifically about written works about writing, I suppose it could apply to oral presentations as well.

The criteria Victoria gives is the professional approaches books on writing, not as providing magical formulae to success, but as “illumination on a craft for which [the writer] has already to lay a foundation. Not said explicitly is the reason the writer reads about writing: to improve in his profession.

This leads to a problem area, a problem that is growing with the length of the information super highway. How do you sift through the incredible amount of advice available is a mark of a professional or an amateur. The pro is “alert to similarities in different writers’ ways of giving the same advice. They’re mentally cataloging the intricacies of each aspect of the craft as they find them elaborated upon in different directions.”

At a writers conference three years ago a writing couple taught a one hour elective on “The Magic Paragraph.” They said they had studied numerous successful novels, and found that these novels always had a sequence of paragraphs that included a magic paragraph with a certain frequency. I took the elective because of the intriguing title. The presentation of the material was good. We received a handout and I took notes. When I got back to my writing, however, I quickly forgot everything I learned in the class. Of course, I was on the typical conference overload, put the notes in a folder, stashed the folder, and forgot about it.

The idea of a “magic paragraph” is alluring to an amateur writer. It sounds like all I had to do was stick one certain type of paragraph in my writing every so often, and I’d have a best seller. Well, of course the overall writing had to be good. And the plot had to be good. And the sequencing of scenes had to be such that the modern reader’s interest would be held. The pro writer would recognize that what the writing couple was saying was every so often you need to break up the paragraph structure and content so as to keep the reader’s interest.

I don’t do enough reading about writing. I admit it; it’s a lack I somehow need to carve out time for. But when I do read about writing (be it on-line or in a printed book or magazine), I feel that I can discern fairly well whether the advice I’m ingesting makes sense and is something I should follow. That’s a good feeling.