7 things only veteran writers know

Being a writer sounds romantic—but is it?

When you spend your days crafting copy for businesses, what should you expect? Is corporate writing very different from personal writing? Will it be fun and fulfilling, or tough and demanding? What do longtime writers say?

To help answer those questions, here’s a look at seven things you don’t know until you’ve been a professional writer for a while:

Other people write better (but that’s OK). If you are the only writer in your circle of friends or you were the best writer in your college class, you might have learned this late: Someone out there writes better than you do.

Comparing yourself against other writers is a discouraging endeavor; it’s a waste of time and energy to dwell on it. Once you’ve been a writer for a while, you understand this.

As K.M. Weiland writes at WritetoDone.com, “The sooner we can stand up to our feelings of jealousy, put them behind us, and work toward being genuinely happy for our fellow writers, the more content and the more productive we’ll be.”