For many people, writing is a hobby that helps them flex their creative muscles and get ideas, thoughts, and stories onto paper. But it’s also one of those productive hobbies that you can turn into paid work.
There are many different types of writers out there and it’s often been said that, if you have a story, you’re a writer. But how can you get your thoughts onto the page and, if you want to, make money from your talent?
Different Types of Writing
When you think of a writer, you might automatically think of an author or someone who writes books for a living. While this is a perfectly legitimate path to go down for a writer, it’s not the only path.
The internet is full of content, and there’s always a need for more people to produce that content. Of course, writing isn’t just about generating content, an AI can do that. When you want to write for a blog or even a business website, you want to add something to the conversation. AI tools are useful, but they are limited. Only people can have original ideas, so it’s important to make your content worthwhile.
But as well as writing online, either for business or pleasure, you can write for video games, advertisements, or anything else that requires a bit of creativity and a pen.
If you broaden your horizons, you’ll find it much easier to find a potential career out of it.
Editing Your Work
The key thing that differentiates a professional writer from an amateur, apart from earning money, is the polish of your work.
Writing has multiple steps, it’s not just a case of vomiting words onto a page and hoping for the best. You need an outline first, then once you’ve gotten your writing out into the world, you need to edit your work.
The actual writing part of writing is only half of the job, and some would argue it’s less than that. Editing your work or, ideally, getting someone else to edit it for you, is what turns a rough document into a polished piece of writing.
Publishing Your Writing
Your writing doesn’t have to be published to “count as writing”, but if you want to earn money, it’s a necessary step. Thankfully, you have a lot of publishing options available.
A lot of people publish online, either in an eBook format or on websites and blogs. If you write for a client, they will usually be responsible for the publishing side of things.
If you want your writing in physical format, you can try to get involved with a traditional publisher or you can self-publish. The upside to publishing traditionally is that a lot of the work is done for you, but you do lose some control over your work and it can be hard to attract a publisher.
When you self-publish, you need to think about editing, marketing, quality book printing, and other ways to get people to buy and read your writing. But some people have seen great success going down this route.
