8:03am

Continuing Education. Aside from my Quixotic crusade to establish a consistent, daily writing habit, the other bane of my existence is continuing education.

For anyone who might not have encountered this precise term, continuing education means staying up-to-date in your chosen field. Improving your skills, knowledge, and/or understanding.

In some fields like firearms, the continuing education takes the form of always making time for practice and range visits. Periodically going to training somewhere like the Gunsite Academy in Arizona. When I was primarily in tech, continuing education was almost equal parts easy and challenging. Easy in that there always seemed to be a plethora of information available, but challenging in several ways.

First, the sheer depth and breadth of the field. It is impossible to be a generalist in Information Technology (IT) beyond the lowest entry-level positions. It just is. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s? Sure… you could hold a fairly high-level position as a generalist. The field wasn’t all that broad or deep. By the early aughts, though? The 2000s? Nah… not gonna happen. The only way to stay even vaguely close to up-to-date is to pick one section of IT and own it. For me, that was Systems (or Servers) and Networks.

Another way IT is challenging for continuing education is the rate at which the field advances. If you go into a store to buy a computer and the salesman tells you a specific model is the latest and greatest that they just got into the store… it’s already behind the bleeding edge in one or more respects. Don’t even get me started on software.

Or whatever new thing in IT you’re trying to study is so new that no one’s writing about yet. No deep dives or feature explorations. That doesn’t happen too, too often… but it does from time to time.

But I’m not in tech professionally anymore, right? Why am I talking so much about keeping skills and knowledge current in IT if I’m not doing that for a living anymore?

Well… as challenging as continuing education is for a field like IT, it’s easy street compared to storytelling.

Storytellers are artists. Yes… to a certain extent, they are sorta kinda crafts-people, but at the end of the day, people who do what I do for a living are creatives. Being creative is a very personal thing. And I don’t mean personal as in personal-private like medical information or stuff like that. I mean every creative’s path is unique to them. Both their path to the field and also their path for self-improvement.

What works for one person isn’t guaranteed to work for their buddy they try to help. Improving one’s skills in any creative endeavor is the ultimate form of throwing pasta at the wall and seeing what sticks.

There are core concepts that are the same for everyone, certainly. But how we learn those concepts, how we use them, and more all vary from creative to creative.

Music is an excellent example. Let’s take the violin. I’m a huge fan of Lindsey Stirling. A person two months into learning the violin is essentially doing the exact same processes that Lindsey is doing. But I’d be willing to wager almost anything you care to name that Lindsey working that bow across those strings sounds way, way better that a student whose only been holding the instrument for two months.

A creative’s path is unique to them.

The next thing to consider is learning styles. I’m not going to delve too deeply into this. If I had completed my Teacher Education undergraduate degree and earned my teaching certificate, I would’ve been the fourth-generation public school teacher in my family. Education isn’t as much my thing as tech and storycraft is, but it’s definitely closer to my core than… oh, say… event planning or a comprehensive study of rice.

I would argue it’s crucial to know how you learn best before you set off on any journey of self-improvement. Do you learn visually, like drawing mind maps and such? Do you learn best by listening? Some people learn really well simply by reading. Others can’t truly assimilate and lock in knowledge or understanding until they actually do it themselves (kinesthetic learning).

This is a topic as deep and broad as there are difference between individuals. Sure… the styles overlap, but there are always nuanced differences from one person to the next.

I could keep going on educational theory, but I’ll save everyone that particular pain.

Storytelling—like most creative endeavors—has a plethora of information out there geared toward beginners to early intermediates. But once a creative reaches a certain level in their craft, how are they supposed to continue improving?

It is very simple but not necessarily easy. Study the masters who’ve gone before you.

For my field, “the masters” means people who have consistently hit the bestsellers list for decades. You’ll recognize most of these names if you’ve been around books much at all.

Stephen King. Nora Roberts. James Patterson (when he writes alone). Dean Koontz. John Grisham. David Baldacci.

The list goes on.

Another method is training by people who are further along in your craft, but you want professionals who’ve been making a living at this for several, several years. There are a lot of people throwing out courses since the explosion of online learning about all kinds of topics, and it’s not always obvious whether they are truly qualified to be speaking on those subjects.

I’ve mentioned this before, so it probably won’t surprise some of you. I consider Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch to be two of my professional role models. They each went full-time professional writer somewhen around 1987 or 1988, and they’ve made a living telling stories ever since. I personally feel that both of them are supremely qualified to teach courses about storytelling in the written form.

They offer both in-person and online workshops (via Teachable), and you can find more information about both at Dean’s site. He even has a suggested curriculum that he updates from time to time.

Now that I’ve set the stage for this rambling discourse…

What has me thinking about continuing education is that I finished Week 3 of Dean’s Endings workshop earlier this morning. The predominant thought on my mind is that I should’ve worked through his Core Craft Curriculum a long, long time ago.

I won’t say I’m especially bad at endings, even though every creative can give you a six-hour lecture on what’s wrong with their latest piece (and most of it’s just in their head, anyway). I will say that I could be much, much better.

The Endings workshop (which I’m going through now) plus Pacing (#10 on Dean’s list) will make a substantive difference in my writing. I don’t want to say that the Endings workshop is blowing me away; that feels rather hyperbolic. I will say it is changing how I look at a crucial part of every story.

If I had it all to do over again (Storytelling Edition), I would work through all 21 workshops on Dean’s “Foundational Courses for Craft” list before I ever considered writing anything past Drakmoor and Cole & Srexx.

Oh… disclaimer… I maybe should mention that I purchased the Lifetime Subscription to the online workshops you can find at the top of Dean’s Teachable catalog. It’s $3,000 the last I knew, and it won’t take you long until it’s saving you all kinds of coin.

But I digress…

Working through all the “Foundational” workshops at the start wouldn’t have been all that difficult to do. He uses a six-week format with five to eight topics per week. When I’m in a good headspace, I can do Week 1 of a workshop on Sunday and finish that workshop on Friday.

One workshop per week = 21 weeks for the “Foundational” curriculum. That’s six months. Less than an academic year and so, so much more valuable… at least for storytelling in the written form.

It should be a yearly process for me to keep the concepts fresh in my mind. Start Depth on the first Sunday of the year and roll right on through the list until I finish #21. I’d be done by July.

Working through the “foundational” courses each year would also probably help me with my writing habit, too… because these workshops leave me energized and thinking about writing.

Once I get through these 21 workshops, I’ll have a good basis to study the writers I named above and actually get something out of it.

No matter what field you’re in, continuing education is crucial, regardless of that fields rate of advancement. At least, I would hope we all want to get better at what we do. The tricky part (as always) is figuring out how to pursue it.

If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking with me. This was a longer one than usual.

I hope the days treat you and yours well. Stay safe out there.