How to Build Your Writing Career

Want to build a great writing career? You can. These days your opportunities are unlimited.

You build your writing career in stages. Expect to become frustrated. This is natural. The key to overcoming your frustrations is to always have goals you’re working towards.

Everything you do is cumulative. No writing you do is ever wasted. Here’s a secret. You’ll see consistent fruits of today’s efforts in three months. If you understand this, you’ll be content to keep writing, because you WILL see results if you do.

For example, let’s say you’ve just made 100 cold calls. Anytime you do that you’ll land somewhere between five and 10 new writing projects. However the prospects you called who don’t have writing jobs for you at the moment, are nevertheless useful contacts you’ve made. Potential buyers need to hear your name several times — popular wisdom suggests that someone needs to hear your name seven times before they recognize it. (I’ve had clients who hired me four and five years after the initial contact.)

When you’re just starting out, developing a writing career can seem very complicated. Here are some tips to help you.

1. Take Any Writing Job You Can Get (First 100 Jobs)

When you’re a brand-new writer, take any and every writing job you can get. For your first 100 jobs, don’t worry about high or low payment. You don’t have the experience to assess buyers, gigs, or anything else. Your aim is simply to complete 100 projects, and to get as many testimonials as possible.

Once you’ve completed those 100 jobs, you’ll look at your writing career very differently.

2. Learn: the More You Know, the More You Earn

Educate yourself. It doesn’t matter what you learn, as long as you keep learning. Do writing courses, take evening classes, take online classes… schedule your learning time and devote at least half an hour to study every day.

Don’t confine your studies to writing. As a writer, you can never know enough. Study anything which appeals to you, because everything you learn helps your writing.

3. Focus on You: What Do You Enjoy Writing? What’s Money for Jam for You?

After completing 100 projects, you’ll have a reasonable idea about what’s fun for you to write. Get more of these kinds of projects.

Here’s why you should focus on what’s fun — you’ll be more creative, and your writing will improve. If you have to whip yourself with a flail to get to your writing desk, you won’t write well. Take it from someone who knows: if you hate a project, or are bored out of your head, your writing will suffer. And so will the rest of your life. Follow your intuition. It will save you grief.

Find more of those projects you enjoyed. The easiest way to do that is to work with the clients you already have.

Send each client a short note, reminding them of the writing work you can do, and asking them for the names of others who might be interested in hiring you.

4. Always Have Goals, and Review Them Each Week

Set a goal. Any goal, and then create tasks which will move you towards that goal.You can set as many goals as you like, and you can change them at any time.

Remember that you’re in charge of your writing career. No one else can tell you what to do — you need to figure it out for yourself. Your goals are your destinations, your guides, and your lifeline. Set goals, then review them and change them as needed.

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