One of the hardest things for me to realize was that I am a flawed person. I don't mean when it comes to personality or temperament, but I mean more along the lines of professional skills. Let me explain… When I first started out writing, I knew that I had a lot to learn, but I considered myself pretty skilled. By the time I completed my first novel, In the Days: A Tale of the Forgotten Continent, I thought I had the writing thing down pretty well. Boy, was I in for a shock! A few reviews opened my eyes (I'll be writing about this on Friday), and I came to realize that I had A LOT to learn. My dad always said, "The more you know, the more you realize you don't know." I always hated that saying, but it's absolutely true! As I delve more and more into the world of writing, story-telling, and being an author, I realize that there is so much to learn. Which has helped me tremendously! I've come to understand that I will make mistakes in my writing. With that understanding, I've started to actively SEARCH for those mistakes. If I can find them myself, it will improve the quality of the work by the time it gets to the people who are reading it--alpha readers, beta readers, editors, and finally the general public. It's amazing how often I end up correcting my writing. Take that sentence right there as an example. It started out as "correcting myself as I write". I changed the structure of the sentence in order to improve it (or at least I think it's better). Any time I write, I look for mistakes. I'm comfortable with the fact that I will make them, so I can look for them to eliminate them. The same with life! I'm going to make mistakes as a partner, a parent, and a professional, but that's not a problem. It's just part of being human. But if I can look for the mistakes I'm making, I can correct and eliminate them before they affect those around me. Thanks to this simple habit, I've improved not only my writing, but also myself!