I don’t get why professional writing seems to be so much better

I mean I know that’s kind of obvious but I genuinely don’t get it. Even professional writing I hate is leaps and bounds better than what I can come up with. <br>I’m going on my fifth year of college and I still can’t seem to get myself to write. I write for school. I write for class. It’s just so much harder for me and it’s so much easier when I go into a class where the writing is doing the heavy lifting. <br><br>It’s hard to describe what I’m looking for when I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I just know what I’m writing isn’t stacking up to what I’ve read. I’m not looking for people to tell me I’m a good writer (since I’m not) but what I am looking for is some… advice on what I can do.<br><br>Of course I’ve read all the usual advice and done all the usual things. I keep a journal, I keep a reading log, I’ve read a few books on how to write and this is why I’m coming here for advice. I’ve already gone through the basics and I’m not finding that getting the basics down is helping. <br>I’ve made a list of what I think separates good writing from bad writing and I think this is where my problem may be. I sometimes feel that I have no conception of what “good” writing is. <br>So here is my list:<br><br>The Questions I Have About Writing<br><br>1. How do you transition between ideas in an essay? What are the rules behind it? I know omitting transitions can make the writing seem choppy. It seems like they’re necessary, how do you use them?<br><br>2. When is it okay to include side details and when is it better to omit them? <br>I’ve found this to be a problem in a lot of my writing. I’ll throw in extra details that aren’t really necessary to the point I’m making. I understand how I should know when to use them… but I don’t. I know this is a problem because I’ve noticed this in other writing. <br>For example, in one of his books, Stephen King talks about how he can’t describe women very well because he grew up in a household without sisters. I love that detail. It’s completely unnecessary and it doesn’t add anything to the rest of the book, but it’s a great detail that humanizes him. In another one of his books, he describes his time in high school by comparing it to the high school in one of his books. He tells us the name of the high school he went to and then he compares it to the high school in one of his books and says that it’s what it would have been like if it was in one of his novels. This was completely unnecessary, but again, it’s a great detail that humanizes him. So I know that side details can be good, I just don’t know when to use them.