Six Steps To A Great Writing Career

April 03, 2008

I was inspired by Skellie to write this post. I started thinking about the advice I’d give to a budding writer, if I knew I only had this post to get that writer started on a career. Sis, this one’s for you.

1. It’s My Paper And I’ll Write If I Want To

(with apologies to whoever sang the song). If you want to be a writer, write. Don’t procrastinate, don’t hide, don’t delay — just write. Write every day if you can for as much time as you can set aside. It may not seem like much, but you have taken the first steps in launching a writing career. You just can’t do it unless you’ve got some writing to show off.

2. Get Out There

Find somewhere to publish your writing. It could be your blog, someone else’s blog, a newspaper, magazine or website. Submit your work to as many places as you can. Something will stick sometime, giving you your first publishing credits. Keep doing that to build up a varied range of clips.

3. Tell The World

Start your own blog or website so you can tell people what you have done and what you can do. Include links to all your published clips and examples of unpublished work that you think is good. Make it clear that people can publish this work for a fee.

4. Talk To Others

Enjoy the company of strangers, but make sure they are writers. Online or offline, writing group or IM chat, it doesn’t matter as long as you can share tips and techniques, rejections and successes with those who are doing the same as you. They will understand you better than people in your own family, trust me.

5. Believe In Yourself

You have something to say and it is worth hearing. Keep doing all these things and others will start to believe in you too. Writing is a skill and an art. Whichever way you want to approach it you can find success. Almost every successful writer has known rejection and privation, but they have kept on going and have triumphed in the end. You can too.

6. Keep Learning

No one knows it all. Learn as much as you can about the craft of writing, the art of writing and the background knowledge for your specialist areas. It won’t be wasted. One day you will be an expert and everyone will be knocking on your door.

It’s true that I could expand on each of these points — and probably will or have — but I wanted to keep it concise. Have you got any tips to add?