Noticing Newbies

First and foremost, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to read this post, and if you take even more time to reply, know that your gesture is infinitely appreciated.

I wanted to tackle two things that have been on my mind as far as writing goes.

1. How I should go about honing my skills in this craft.

2. Reviews

One is the thing I'm most worried about. I'm extremely passionate about writing, which is why we're all here, but I'm unsure of how I should go about learning things that don't reveal themselves to me. I've found myself a bit to comfortable as of late. Writing hip hop lyrics is another one of my hobbies, but that has a strong influence on my poetry. Because of this, I seem to stay within the lines of free verse poems. Which isn't a bad thing... but I feel like there's so much more to learn. I want to learn how to write short stories, novels, traditional poems with structure, and everything else on the list of literation. I just don't know where to begin, and so, I'm coming to the WDC community. :D

Two is just something I thought about and has become quite bothersome personally. I love when someone reads my little poems and gives them a review, but I have no idea what to do with the review afterwards. I should respond...but oddly enough, I don't know what to say to all these awesome people who took the time to read my work... Any pointers?

Again, thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you guys.

~Nobody