This weekend I went to training for my Board of Education position. It was intense. Classes from 6 PM – 10 PM Friday and 8:30 AM – 10 PM Saturday, then 9 AM – noon on Sunday.

I. Was. Fried.

Despite being tired (but not hungry—they fed us well!), I learned a lot. And there is so much more to learn. It will take years to become truly knowledgeable.

A writing career is no different–it takes years of continuous professional development to even approach mastery. You work on one craft element, then another, then another, constantly learning as each element intersects and influences the others. David King calls this the “web of writing” and it’s one of the trickiest parts of writing. No element exists in a vacuum.

So we learn about each element separately (because it’s the only way to stay sane), but then have to integrate it into the whole. Which can lead to your story feeling lopsided as you excel at some elements but not at others. Continuing professional development will eventually smooth it out as you bring all the elements up to par.

But even after mastering the basics, the learning never stops. Writing is a craft of infinite depth, and I am not sure there is an actual bottom. Creativity has no boundary, the horizon is ever just out of reach.

One time, a friend asked me why I continued to come to the same writer’s conference every year. I replied that I learned something new every year, because I was in a different place as a writer than last year. Things I could not grasp the year before, I could this year. Learning is a constant process of building on what you already know. It never ends.

And that is one reason I love writing so much.