What’s the one piece of advice you’d known before starting your writing career?

I started writing fifty years ago because I loved to read. There wasn’t anybody to advise or criticize my efforts then, but some years later I went back to school to complete my degree in English Lit and writing. Then I had an encouraging professor with whom I did several semesters of writing and conference. He advised me to keep at it, said I had talent to “go places”. I wrote hundreds of thousands of words over ensuing years, some published respectable places, some that ended up in boxes in my attic. If I’d had one piece of advice that would have been helpful, it would have been to learn technical writing sooner so I could have made a living with the craft.