Writing for a Living
Many people have at one time or another considered writing for a living. Especially anyone who has received praise for their written work.
Unfortunately for most of us, writing for a living does not necessarily mean that we will get to be as creative or prosaic as we would like to be, and this is very clear once you start looking for jobs on the Internet. In this article, we will take a look at why it is important to differentiate your writing career from your writing hobby, and how to do so.
I will starve for my art!
This is the rally cry for many a writer; they refuse to compromise their work or “demean” themselves by agreeing to write pieces which fail to meet their standards of what writing should be. In other words, they are more the type to sit down and write a poem than a 500 word piece on Condominiums in Toronto.
The good news for those types of writers is that they can indeed expect to starve for their art. For every success story in the writing world who slaved away for years before getting noticed, there are a thousand who continue to starve because they were or are just too stubborn to treat a writing career as a business instead of a hobby.
Either that, or they were stuck at non-career jobs for most of their lives, receiving manuscript after manuscript back from publishers who just are not interested in their work.
If you want to make writing your career, you are going to have to work
For most of us, writing for a living means divorcing ourselves from what we would like to write and writing what other people want us to.
My big desire is to write about sports; I love sports and I can write very good biographies on athletes, summaries of games and events, even books on rules and regulations. The problem is the sports writing market is competitive and there are many writers with better connections than myself.
I could just say I am willing to serve at restaurants until that golden opportunity comes by, but having done so I know that it is much more preferable to focus on the writing part of my career and take jobs that I have a little less interest in.
That way I make money and hone my skills, and there is always the potential to have that dream job come floating in.
Get rid of the dreamy ideal
It’s fine to love your work and to want to be successful writing for a living, but you don’t have to overdo it. Many writers, whether in their profiles on bidding sites or on their own pages, will include phrases such as “writing is my life, and nothing is more important to me” in order to show how committed they are.
Unfortunately this approach just will not work for the practical writer.
The big reason is that this kind of statement really turns off potential employers. Again, you have to remember that this is business, not a hobby any longer. A web site developer who wants content written about the best diet plans does not care if you can use hundred dollar words and thousand dollar phrases in your article; she wants to see easy to read, informative content on her subject which Internet readers will grab on to.
In order to find jobs writing on the Internet and really anywhere else, it’s important to assume that editors and web developers are already aware that inside of every writer there are hundreds of stories waiting to come out. Leave that out of your pitch, and instead focus on what you will do for them.
They have practical jobs that they need filled and are willing to pay for, and they are looking for a practical writer to do them. Writing for a living is much different than writing as a hobby, and you will find that success will come once you develop a much more hard-nosed approach to the whole business.
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March 3rd, 2008 at 5:08 am
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