Advice needed- after rhythm guitar, what's next?

Ok folks, I need your advice. I first started playing guitar 7months ago and now, I have become quite good at playing easy songs. My strumming has come along nicely as I can now determine the strumming patterns by ear. So I'm guessing the next thing is licks, riffs and stuff- what the big dogs- the "real guitarists" do? Anyway, I've been practicing the chromatic scale like my teacher told me to.(apparently this is like learning HANON for piano)
I started on the higher end of the fretboard where the frets are smaller to slowly improve my stetching. Now I have arrived at the 4th fret or so. I do work with a metronome and on each fret once I feel comfortable I speed up the tempo to improve dexterity.(on a side note, Ascending seems a lot harder than descending when I do the scale. Is this normal? i can go about twice as faster when I descend)
Anyway- so what's next for me?
Once I can do all this comfortably at a rapid pace on the first fret, what's next? Just try playing songs by ear?

Oh yea and, do when you do riffs, do you have to always alternate your picking up/down, up/down? is that like "the proven and easiest" way to play?

Just out of curiosity- are there any rhythm guitarists out there that don't bother to go beyond? I mean, for singing and self accompaniment purposes, it seems as though mastering rhythm guitar is like a "point of sufficiency." There's many songs don't have riffs and just consist of chords and strumming.

(Just to let you know where I'm coming from - I have more of a vocal slant- my main interest is singing and songwriting, as much as I enjoy do playing the guitar and intend to get better. I started playing guitar because singing with guitar accompaniment sounds a 1000 times better than without accompaniment. Anyway I have realistic expectations in that, as much as I'll practice guitar there's tons of extremely skilled guitarists out there)

Ok enough babbling. What should I work on folks?

woot! im an acoustic, rythmic, songwriting, bad voicing whore! i too have been playing just under a yr....next month is a yr...yes it is normal when u find it easier to descend on a scale compared to ascending....but with practice its all good...well as far as 'where should i go from here'..id suggest experimenting with different kinds of riffs...like try to come up with ur own stuff and add a little complex stuff into it...like picking and whatnot...different strumming patterns, well depends on what style u play...id probably stick to rythm because i cant play lead for nuts...well blues is alright but yeah..anyhoo...thats imo.. :)

i play mostly lead and I wish my rythm was a bit stronger. My advice would be, if you really wanna learn a little lead even just to accent your rythm work, to practice the minor, major, and pentatonic scales. Also work on techniques like hammer ons and pull offs. You can blend them both together and come up with some cool stuff. Kinda like Bother by Stone Sour. :)

I've heard say that if you start out drumming, your rhythm is damn near unshakeable. Buy some bongos and add some funky rhythms to songs you like. Just pop in a CD and play along.

well, there's a lot more ou there, theory, (a study so big that you will never learn absolutley everything about it) How to write songs, though it takes years of studying, the physics of the axe itself, different woods, different bodies, ect. Barre chords, and, I dunno, the list is endless, it goes on and on and on. Just try to learn something new every day, practice almost every day, so you wont lose interest, though everyone is different and all have verying levels of interest in it. Some people just like learning a few chords, some lose sleep studying it.

I'm no expert but my next move would to be learn the pentatonic scale. Once you have this down the modes will be easier to learn if you so desire. With chords and the pentatonic scale you can do fine as a singer/song writer.

Sounds like you have a very thorough, organised practice regime there. I'm jealous! :)

Yeah, if you haven't already mastered barre chords, focus on them. They are just so useful it's not funny, I am a chronic barre chord addict.
If you've got those down-pat, and you know all your major, minor, 7th, minor 7th chords, you might like to try out a few different styles of guitar playing. Rock, pop, jazz, folk, blues, metal, reggae, classical - they all have distinct technical approaches (rhythm and lead alike). Trying them out will help you work out which musical path you want to pursue. Ask your teacher about this, and perhaps some basic songs you could go through for each one. Here are a couple of basic "genre" songs I used when I was at this stage:

Rock: Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
Jazz: Dave Brubeck Quartet - "Take Five" (arranged for guitar)
Blues: John Lee Hooker - "Boom Boom Boom Boom"
Classical: Pachelbel's "Canon" (transposed to C Major)
Pop: Green Day - "Good Riddance"
Metal: Silverchair - "Freak"
For other styles, my teacher just came up with some basic riffs of his own for me to practice.

Hope all my blabbing helped a bit...