The Professional Writer: Part Four - Write Everything

Working as a copywriter may not be as glamorous as some other writing jobs, but to anyone serious about working with words, the difference is irrelevant. If I enjoyed tinkering with engines on the weekend, landing a job as a bus mechanic would be just as exciting as working on Ferraris.

The professional writer should not be precious about the medium he chooses. Instead, he should be ready to seize almost any opportunity to advance the twin goals of income and exposure.

I have met many people in my time who expressed a wish to write. Often this wish is restricted – ‘I want to write comics’ - ‘I want to write for Doctor Who’ - ‘One day I will write a novel’. And so on.

The professional writer is less likely to care for such specific goals and will have a broader motivation – ‘I want to write!’

There are limitations, of course. There are certain jobs I wouldn’t take out of principle. But I would never restrict myself to a particular writing goal and ignore anything else.

The Formative Years of a Writer

I’ve always enjoyed writing. From penning short stories in primary school to the photocopied fanzines I used to out together with my best friend, Matthew Sweet, during our teenage years, the push to express myself in words was always present. Matthew and I were as professional about our fanzine activities as two fifteen year olds could be. Any money we earned was put back into the magazine.

I also was instrumental in starting up a school magazine – producing articles on everything from celebrity biographies to history and local community issues. I wanted to find more and more excuses to write.

Just as many famous movie directors spent their formative years playing around with super8 cameras, we were playing around with the tools of professional writers – subediting each other’s articles, organising print jobs, planning advertising and trying to get ourselves read by a wider audience. Magazine production, even on an amateur scale, was fun to these two enthusiastic teenagers. While other kids were playing soccer or faking IDs, we were fiddling with typewriter ribbons and Letraset.

Matthew has since gone on to be a successful writer and broadcaster for the BBC and I am now a professional marketing copywriter with a sideline as a contributor to Nett Magazine, but I don’t expect either of us will finish there.

A Passion For Writing is Universal

If your motivation is less about the actual writing and publication and more about being associated with a particular medium, genre or character, you may be heading for disappointment. Being a comic fan does not mean you can write comics. A love of movies cannot create a screenwriting career. Knowing every adventure Spider-Man has experienced doesn’t qualify you to produce the next one.

Couple the passion with a similar passion for writing and you may have something. Yet the passion of writing should not be confined to one genre or medium.

Salman Rushdie started his career as a copywriter before going onto become one of Britain’s great modern novelists. Terrance Dicks, the god of Doctor Who writer’s started the same way. Bill Bryson started as a journalist for the Independent. If these three had stuck to their guns and refused to write anything except their novels or scripts, it is unlikely we would know them today. A publisher would be less likely to read Bryson’s manuscript if his name wasn’t already in print.

By grabbing those first writing jobs in magazines, newspapers, copywriting, or wherever there’s a byline to be had, a writer further hones the necessary skills and creates a professional name. No one writes for Doctor Who without having proven themselves as a writer elsewhere. The Marvel Comics submission policy is to request writing samples that steer well clear of any of their characters.

Whatever your professional goals, by opening yourself to all forms of available writing, it is possible to build a career that may eventually lead you exactly where you always hoped to go.

The Starving Writer

There isn’t going to be a world-shortage of writers any time soon. Just like actors, there are only a small percentage of writers who are able to work full time from key-tapping. Many more supplement their writing career with other work, or find the gap between paid commissions too wide to survive without alternative employment.

The most famous names in writing are far outnumbered by those who only have a handful of published works to their name. More novelists end up in remaindered stores than on best seller lists.

Some of the most successful professional writers today know that the only way to keep their dance card full is to take a variety of jobs. Warren Ellis is best known for his comic work, but also writes television specs, computer games, online columns and novels. Many a screenwriter is also a novelist or television writer or comic writer or all three. Almost every professional writer has a portfolio of magazine articles and newspaper columns built up in between the longer projects and designed to increase exposure and spread the name about a bit.

So if you are serious about writing, grab anything you can. Send articles to magazines. Find out the criteria for newspaper submissions. Better still, rather than waiting for opportunity to knock, go out there and make it. Self-publishing is hugely important for the struggling writer to get noticed.

After all, it’s where I started.

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