Job Series: being a writer

My collage titled "Show up on the page." Click on the image to enlarge.

I regularly am asked how I got started in writing as a career. It is a line of work with infinite variations, and I have done most of them. As I would tell my classes, I’ve written everything from state legislation to bad poetry. A recent email from a student, plus a barrage of questions from a poll-taker when she learned I was a writer, reminded me this is a subject worth posting about again. Over the upcoming weeks, I’ll discuss specific types of writing, including Grant Writing, Technical Writing, Corporate Writing, and Journalism (print and electronic). You can write for a company, a publication or on your own as a freelancer. I’ll discuss fiction later this fall after I’ve refreshed my credentials at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ annual Gold Writers’ Conference.

First, allow me to rant: being a writer means you WRITE—not that you sit and moan about how one day when you have time you’ll be published and well-known. This maxim is true no matter what type of writing you want to do, whether it is the Great American Novel, a prize-winning essay, a computer manual, a feature article for a business website, or a textbook. This sounds elementary, but it is often overlooked by so many people.

A friend of mine has had a number of novels published. I personally do not care for them, but hey—many people do! Someone who is an aspiring writer who had never written anything brought up the novels and said, “I can’t believe how bad they are. I can write better ones.” My unspoken thought was, “yes, but he has WRITTEN them and seen them through the slow tedious process of finding an agent and a publisher. And how many books have you written?”

Another friend of mine was the editor of a medical journal for the medical association of his state and a published poet. Every evening after dinner he would go to his study and write poetry (his were good poems) for four hours. He wrote, rather than whining about how he’d write poems once he had the time.

So the first thing you need to do if you want to write, whether it is purely for self-expression or as a career, is "show up on the page." Start writing!