CHANGING GENRES

Some of us who have chosen to write fiction come from a variety of a variety of places. And by a variety of places I'm not referring to a physical location [city, state or country"; I'm referring our wrting experiences.
There are some of us who have enjoyed writing since we were a child, and each year we had written something in school it improved. For some of us, it has continued until we've graduated college and are working. Some of us entered the work force taking jobs which required us to write, whether it was procedures, handbooks/manuals, or news stories. But all of these are non-fiction, and each one has a set of "rules" which need to be followed to write something well enough to be acceptable.
As for myself, while my regular job did not require me to write, for eleven years I wrote articles [commentaries/viewpoints] of what was happening in my community. When I started to write these items my writing skills were not honed; and by the end I stopped I became quite adept at it.
Starting to write fiction, I somehow drift to writing a romance story and I still have it, a contemporary paranormal which after almost 9 years is still not completed. Someone at the local chapter of the RWA suggested I should write for a much younger audience, which is what I'm writing right now--right now for which I've written over 42,000 words and still need at least 7,800 words to finish.
The story I'm writing is a YA Paranormal/Time Travel/First Kiss romance, where I've writtien more in several months than I had with my previous endeavor.
Anyway, making the transition from non-fiction to fiction I've had to learn a new set of rules in how to write. Most of these involved dialogue--telling not showing; where before I just told. I had to learn about tags. I had to learn not to be overly descriptive of something, but allow my reader to create the image for themselves in their minds. It was hard to do at the beginning, because old habits are hard to break, and now I'm finding it easier each day. The biggest issue I've had to face and which I'm still trying to get a good handle on is POV [Point of View], regardless of what's happening or being said it has to be in one's character's perspective, and you can't flip-flop between two characters within a scene--there needs to be a transition from one character to another.
The critiques I've listen to for another members of the RWA chapter I belong to us help me mold myself to the author I'm becoming.
I've also learned there are addtional rules within a genre depending on the sub-genre you've decided to write in. These rules apply to the dialogue spoken which needs to be true to the time period you're writing in, as well as how your characters are dressed, and their titles if any [as is the case with the regencies sub-genre in romance].
So as you can see writing is not mere a string of words you put together, there are rules which need to be followed.
I hope everyone read this has come away with some knowledge they didn't have before. If you want to, you can leave a message and I'll try to respond, as soon as I can.