Professionalism in Writing: Why It's Important to Act like a Pro and to Be a Pro

We come to writing for very different reasons. Some of us want to be poets, others novelists. Some do it for themselves, friends, or for God. Some use their writing to heal their hearts, while others find it a purely educational experience.

Then some do it for the wealth, the notoriety. The ability to tell anyone they meet they're published. They do it as a dream job. They do it for the reader, too, sometimes. This article is about them, the writers who expect their writing, whether poetry, non-fiction, or fiction, to find an audience other than their closest friends and family, an audience that pays for the opportunity to read what they hope will be inspiring, tranquil, dramatic, or informational.

There are vast differences between the writer who writes, not for the world, but for himself, and the writer who writes for the world and himself. When the writer allows his work to travel from one computer to another-or from one mail box to another-he can no longer hide behind the amateur self he once was, but must take responsibility for what he writes.

The writer who crosses the line from modest to egotistical must hold tightly to professionalism or risk being labeled ignorant, or worse, a hack.

But what is this line? Modest is the writer who writes poetry to read on rainy days or somber nights. When a writer seeks publication, she accepts that someone else may want to read her work, and at that moment she jumps across the line from modesty to egotistically driven, the way of a professional author. The problem is this: many writers mistakenly believe they deserve to be read without understanding that they must leave behind the rules of the self-writer, and pick up the cross of the author writing for an audience.

Why is this important? Isn't all writing essentially the same?

It comes down to professionalism. When you go from the self-writer to the audience-writer, you must become a professional or you will never find publication, or, if you self-publish, you will not find a readership or fan base. Readers seek good writing, talented writing, and won't buy anything that is smack of junior high prose. The self-writer can put aside the rules that make writing good. If she chooses to incorporate them, she does so not because she has to, but because she wants to. The publication seeking writer has to incorporate these rules. She isn't writing for herself, but for readers who expect much more than the amateur writer expects.

What is professionalism?

Simply put, a professional writer is anyone who gets paid to write, or in my extended definition, anyone wanting to get paid to write. To be professional, writers must BE professional. This means using all the things the amateur writer can leave behind. When you seek publication you can no longer shrug off the tedious revising and editing of your work.

You can no longer use sloppy formatting and grammar, false characters and unrealistic dialogue. But it's not just about style and form. It's the attitude that goes with it, the attitude of someone who is doing something for someone else, wanting it to be the best it can be to please whoever may find it. At this point, writing stops being the writer's, and becomes everyone else's. It's the price a writer has to accept and pay for with the soul of his work, in order to please the eternally holy reader.

I'm talking about killing your darlings, taking criticism and using critiques to your advantage, constantly reading other writers' work and studying the craft to perfection. I'm talking self discipline and earnest dedication. Honesty with yourself and with the reader, your words, and life itself.

How to be professional:

A writer's bread and butter are grammar and punctuation. Many a professional writer wannabe has shrugged at the fact they must have a firm-as steady as rock-understanding of English. Misspelled and misused words kill as quickly as arsenic and cyanide. Missed periods, commas, and quotation marks are black eyes on the faces of potential prom queens and super models. Your work may very well be your darling, but readers are going to wonder if you don't beat her, if you neglect her.

Writers mistakenly use the same rusted, outdated tools when they venture from writing for themselves to writing for others. To be accepted as an author, you must use the tools of one who writes for an audience; otherwise you should pack it up now and continue writing for fun. Get control of the horse (your ego) before it breaks its neck, and yours.

There are thousands (dare I say millions?) of resources for writers to learn, not just punctuation and grammar, but style, characterization, setting, plot, dialogue, and the ins-and-outs of the publishing industry. You can spend months in a library studying writing books, years in a bookstore, and then when you venture online, you could be lost for decades eating all of the information available.

No way should you actually spend months, years, or decades perfecting your craft, for perfection comes through writing (and especially editing). But to begin, not with your own mind and work, but with others' is as vital to your writing career as your heart is vital to your body.

Can't stand the heat? Stay out of the oven!

The one thing, above all else, separating the pro from the novice is that professionals never work lazily. They put in tremendous effort each day. The novice can get away with throwing work together and calling it genius, but a professional can NEVER do that. They, after all, have the reader to take care of and contend with when things go wrong.

Professional writers don't see mistakes in their work and tell themselves (and definitely not others) that their editor will take care of it. They don't wake up in a bad mood and blow off the day. They don't send material to their agents or publishers knowing and willingly accepting that it's not their best work, that they could have done another draft or two to improve on it.

If you take yourself and your work seriously, you will put in the effort it takes to make the work and yourself the best both can be. Ability is separated from average by effort. Professionalism is effort. It is focused effort. It is setting your schedule so that you work from 8-12 each night, 8-12 in the morning, or 8-4 each day if you write full time.

Professionalism is the corner stone of success and writing is like any other career. Treat it like a career and you will go much further than the writers who don't.