Reader Question: How much time have you invested in order to get a grasp on writing? 

The answer would shock you. Twenty years. And that is the actual time. But the compressed time would probably be five years. Since along the way I had life and I went on hiatus. But the thing is with being a writer, you never stop writing. I spin stories in my mind when I am not writing. I gather data for future work by experiencing life, falling in love and getting broke several times. This would later lend the reality to my fiction. My mentor told me that we can't write what we don't know and I believe that. We all know different kinds of love and we all have different experiences. 

But what you can do as you are not writing, you can read :

My favorite book is Love in the Time of Cholera. My mom gave me the book as a Christmas gift. My male bestie from university borrowed it and never returned it. But I know my book is loved and cared for since my bestie is a bigger nerd than I am. Read it from here. 

Also you can read the classics that are available online. 

So why am I telling you to read when you should be writing? It's because for someone like me who can not ride an airplane, this is how I learn how to be in different places and cultures that I would otherwise never see. I also consume a lot of travel information from travel shows. All those little tidbits I can read about and use later. 

Also watch the news or read. You can get a prompt there and you can widen your world view. Your characters would have depth because at the very least they can make statements that are not half-assed. With all the crazy things that happened in the world, you can pick out a villain from any news about extremists and evil people doing evil things. Just a heads-up, sometimes reading the news is depressing.