Harsh Reality 5

 

Since starting this blog last year, I have regularly been asked about how to become a professional writer. Mary, one of my keener subscribers (see – I didn’t forget you), recently raised the topic again and prompted me to think some more on it. Some of the issues related to this discussion I covered previously in my series on The Professional Writer, but what I didn’t cover was how to get writing work in the first place.

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For many, the article that follows may seem negative and discouraging. That is not my intent. I merely want to illustrate the harsh realities of the grit, learning, commitment and – let’s face it – luck that goes into convincing someone to actually pay you for your words.

There’s More to Writing Than Writing

I started the job a few days later. I was shown to my work station, was given a description of my duties and then was told that, until customer copywriting orders started arriving, I was to help completely overhaul the existing website while writing articles and blog posts on issues concerned with online marketing and ecommerce. Remember, I knew nothing of SEO and all the other techniques online marketers used, but I was now required to not only write the pages of a website selling these services, but also to write detailed and informative articles on the subject.

So I did what a writer does best if he isn’t writing. I read.

Every lunch break I was buying and reading industry magazines. Every spare moment I had, I was visiting social media sites, such as Sphinn, that specialise in online marketing. I subscribed to more blogs than I could conceivably read in a week. I created this very blog as an extension to the original website so that I could practice the principles I was reading and test them out for myself. I knew that merely regurgitating the facts I read elsewhere would be meaningless. I needed to know these things first hand by doing.

In the evenings, I was still at the PC, either reading, Sphinning or coding the website. Very soon, I was submitting my own articles to Sphinn and was encouraged by the response. By January, I not only had the blog off and running with a number of subscribers, but I began writing on these topics for Nett Magazine, a new small business ecommerce title released in Australia in December.

I went from ignorance to authority on the topic of online business and internet marketing in weeks. The boss was now coming to me for advice on how to improve the link structure of the site. My name was becoming recognised in the online community.

As a result, I no longer carry out customer copywriting jobs. We have employed a young journalism graduate to deal with customers as I have inadvertently created a brand new role within the organization – that of Marketing Communications Manager. And I got a whacking pay rise to boot. My duties are pretty much as you would expect. I blog and write articles to build brand awareness of Netregistry and its subsidiaries, while creating and running the new social media campaigns we have implemented as a result of my work.

Without all this additional research and commitment and sweat and experimentation, I would not be in this job. If I hadn’t thrown myself into working every moment I had with a passion to fully understand and become an informative voice in the industry, I probably wouldn’t have lasted in the industry longer than five minutes. Anyone can turn up to a job at 9 and leave at 5. Anyone can claim that it is up to other people to train them or provide guidance. I chose to create the writer I wanted to be, with no half measures and plenty of sacrifices along the way.

The lesson? Be a writer 24×7. Always reading, always learning, always observing. Your writing is only ever as good as the information you have to impart or the unique perception you have. Make sure your message is worth writing about and live it with a passion.

Conclusions

So there you go. I know that’s not as simple an answer as some of you were hoping for. I can’t provide you the number of an employment agency for writers. I can’t give you any shortcuts or back doors into your dream. A writing career is a result of determined graft and nothing else; no courses, no contacts, no books and no tricks can replace that. Having said that, the courses, the books and the contacts are all necessary too.

And a massive dose of luck.

As I said at the beginning, I don’t mean any of this to be demotivating – merely realistic. If you read any of the above and felt intimidated by the truth, then maybe you need to very carefully think about whether your dream is best left that way. But, alternatively, if you are destined to be a writer, you will overcome adversity and stick at it with the gumption to do the things I did. Just remember, there are no guarantees and always have a second job.

Es Sanchez