Want a Writing Career? Check Out These Five Opportunities

One of the most common questions among people passionate about writing is “Which career should I choose?” Answering this question is often tougher than it seems.

Why so? Because there are so many common misconceptions concerning writing: you cannot make a career on it, you cannot earn much, and so on.

Another problem is the choice of a future career. It seems there aren’t so many options for those who want to earn a living with the help of their writing skills. You either get a journalism degree or a literature degree (or perhaps a degree in creative writing).

However, in reality, it’s not like that. You don’t need to choose only one of those professions – and you don’t actually need a degree if you want to write. There are plenty of people who managed to build a successful career only because they loved writing and worked hard.

So if you want to become a writer, here are five paths you can take.

Copywriting

Copywriters create a huge variety of texts, from promotional and marketing materials to website content. This job may or may not require any special skills. For example, if you want to work for a digital agency, you might need some extra marketing training. However, if you want to write articles for a lifestyle website, all you need is some basic knowledge and some personal experience to share.

The best thing about this career is that it’s very easy to become a copywriter if you want to. You can write a couple of texts for your portfolio and start looking for clients on freelance websites immediately. Moreover, you can easily switch to another type of writing if you get bored: for example, from article to ad writing.

Journalist

It’s probably one of the most exciting writing careers. The thing about it is that you not simply write – you share the latest stories with the world.

Of course, such a job requires an impressive number of skills. The degree is important here, though you can still become a good journalist without one. But what’s even more important is your ability to work quickly.

Good journalists surf the web a lot. They track social media and news sources to find something fresh and valuable to share with the readers – or they go out and try to spot the recent news first. They conduct in-depth researches and interview experts to support everything they write about with facts and valuable opinions. On top of that, they do it quickly most of the times, especially when we’re talking about news journalists.

Author

If you’ve been dreaming to write your own book someday, why not start now? There are different kinds of authors these days, so you can easily choose an option that seems the most appealing.

First

First, there are novelists.  They write slowly, either getting some kind of financing from a publishing house or from their fans (for example, with the help of projects like Patreon) or combining writing with another job before they send their finished manuscript to publishing agencies. Novelists can also self-publish these days and get paid when their books are sold on Amazon.

There are eBook writers, who usually write much quicker and focus on offering some informative content to the readers: long guides, books on certain topics, and so on.

And then there are ghostwriters, who can write novels or eBooks too. The only difference here is that they don’t own the copyrights to their own work, passing them to the client in exchange for money. While this kind of work might seem weird to some people, actually it allows such writers to polish their skills and improve their writing while getting paid in the process.

Academic Writer

If you have good grades, a degree, and a strong knowledge of various college subjects, you can become an academic writer. Actually, even a degree isn’t always necessary – for example, students of top courses can become academic writers as well, sharing college essay writing tips and crafting all kinds of papers for other students.

Academic writing requires a lot of in-depth research as well as knowledge of various writing styles (APA, MLA, and so on). However, if crafting your college writing assignments always has been an easy job for you and if you know a subject or two deep enough, you’ll most likely enjoy the process very much.

Blogger

Blogging is probably one of the few careers that actually allows you to earn money from writing about things you really like. Though blogging can be a job too (for example, you write for someone else’s blog and get paid for that), many bloggers are self-starters. Some of them view the blog as a hobby only to realize that it starts bringing them some money later. Some start blogs because their main intention is to monetize them.

Whatever you might choose, remember that in most cases blogging doesn’t pay right away. It takes some time, consistency, and hard work to build a loyal audience and make your blog popular enough for it to earn you a living. However, blogging still has one big benefit – you are able to write about what you want, format the posts just like you like, and not be too formal if you don’t want to. Many people love bloggers because of their personality, the stories they share and their writing style, so it’s a great opportunity for you to show yourself to the world.

Of course, these five writing careers aren’t the only one you can pursue. You can become a screenwriter, a technical writer, a game writer, and so on too. These five writing careers are the most popular ones. So if one of them sound appealing to you, you can research it deeper. And if not, always remember that there are many more options waiting for you.

 

 

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