Journalism writing focuses on writing for various types of broadcast media including magazine articles, newspapers, teleprompter content for news, news releases, and so on.
Other types of writing jobs focus on other types of media, including entertainment and information. As a professional writer or editor you will need a college degree in journalism, communications, or English; in some cases, if you are a technical writer, having a degree in that specific area of technical expertise will give you the skills you need to be a technical writer, as long as you have a good grasp of the English language.
Types of Writing Jobs
Writing jobs in every industry are quite competitive because a lot of people have a talent for writing and think they would like to write for a living. One of the fastest-growing areas of writing is that which takes place on the Internet. Therefore, writers and editors with multimedia or Web experience are increasingly in demand too.
As a writer and author, for example, you might develop your own original material for magazines, journals, newsletters, Web sites, movies, commercials, or television shows. In these cases, you will usually specify whether or not you write fiction or nonfiction.
However, it can be broken down even further. You might be a textbook writer, a screenwriter, someone who writes biographies, a playwright, or a novelist. Textbook writers, for example, write educational materials for schools and colleges. Someone who focuses on writing life histories about famous people is a biographer. Someone who focuses on writing plays is a playwright. Someone who focuses on writing fictional material for literary enjoyment is a novelist.
In some cases, you write to be published, while in other cases, you write in a work-for-hire situation whereby you are hired specifically to write for a particular job. Scriptwriters, for example, often write scripts specifically for the shows they work on and in general do not own the materials they write, although they may receive compensation in the form of residuals in addition to a salary for doing so.
As a writer, you may work with an editor to get your book published, or you may work with an editor at a particular magazine that has commissioned you to write a particular article. If the work you do is nonfiction, in general you are expected to have clearly defined sources for quoted material in the article itself so that readers can easily tell what is your own material and which material you have borrowed from someone else. Taking someone else’s material as your own without noting it is called plagiarism and is illegal.
Another type of writing job is as a copywriter. Copywriters prepare the copy that is used in advertisements; those advertisements are then used in some type of broadcast media, such as in magazines or commercials. These materials are specifically written to promote the sale of services or goods. In general, they work with their clients to produce these materials specifically as the client wishes.
If you are good at breaking down highly technical information and putting it into easily understandable language, you might have a career as a technical writer. These writers prepare product documents that help people know how to use them, like computer manuals, product assembly instructions, and so on. In most cases, technical writers work specifically on technical materials that need to be explained in easy-to-understand language. In some cases, technical writers also help by becoming part of a team that seeks to improve product designs for either pre-existing products or during product development. In that case, technical writers document the product development in the form of technical materials and also help prepare illustrations, diagrams, and charts that will help make the product its best.
Getting Writing Jobs
If you like and use words well, you might fantasize about becoming a writer when it comes time to choose your profession. And indeed, many people do become writers in some capacity in their jobs. Doing so full-time as a freelance writer, for example, is a relatively rare occurrence and usually only happens after someone has been working and honing writing skills in another profession, such as if one is first an editor for a magazine company or something similar.
Nonetheless, the Internet has made it increasingly easy for people to write for publication through the use of blogs, for example. In this way, many people are becoming writers at least part-time when they might not have done so previously. Therefore, if you are interested in becoming a writer professionally at some point, one of the best ways to do so is to blog or do something similar whereby you have to write every day on a specific topic you enjoy. The difference between this and private writing, of course, is that if you blog or do something for publication, other people are going to read it. This gets you used to having what you write read by others, and it may in fact lead to some type of writing job in the future.
If what you want to do is of a more formal capacity, such as becoming a journalist, you should focus on honing writing skills throughout high school and into college. Work on getting a college degree that focuses on writing skills and will give you the ability to get a job where writing is a large component of it, such as becoming a newspaper reporter. In that case, you might want to consider a degree in journalism.
Outlook and Compensation
Because writing is such a uniquely artistic field, compensation and outlook depend on a particular writer’s talent, luck and skill. Getting a job as a writer in any field takes luck, persistence, and talent. Nonetheless, staying with it and honing talent is the best way to succeed, often while doing something else to pay the bills while you launch a writing career.
That said, specific fields like copywriting or journalism do have a specific career path you may want to follow. These jobs are competitive, but if you have the talent and drive to succeed, you can launch a successful career as a writer no matter what field you decide to enter.
