The Dream Of Becoming A Professional Writer

Here is the thing about writers. We write. No one has to pay us to write, it's just what we do.

The idea that we could be paid to write, is usually an after thought to a natural born writer. For me, writing is another form of thinking. The concept that I could get paid to think, frankly seems too good to be true.

Except that there are plenty of people who do earn a living from writing. There has to be, after all, the internet is full of words. Words that people have written. Stories, articles, blog posts, even advertisements. So whats the secret? How does someone go from writing interesting and compelling social media posts, to writing professionally?

I have been trying to answer this question for the last year and a half. I started this journey with absolutely no knowledge about writing for pay, though I have learned some valuable lessons along the way.

I started my journey the same way that most journeys of this nature are started today. With a Google search. Which is not a bad place to start, depending on the kind of writing that you want to do. After reading some informative articles about sites that accepted submissions, I was excited. This looked doable. I had a few stories under my belt, and given a topic, I can whip up a blog post in no time flat. I went to bed that night feeling good.

The next day was different. Suddenly I was bombarded with ads about how to learn to get paid to write. My social media was covered with them, the ads on my phone, even my email was filled with clever targeted ads assuring me that I could start my new writing career right away. Filled with promises that they had a program that would teach me the short cuts that would allow me to break into the industry.

I am not completely naive. I recognized these ads for what they were - ads. So I ignored them, and read as many blog posts and articles about getting paid to write as I could find. Believe me, there is no shortage of this stuff on the internet. What emerged was a discouraging trend of redundancy. The total of information available could be found within the first 4 articles that I read.

Most of us know that this is true of every popular subject that people want to learn about. Especially when it involves making money. Naturally, simply because the topic at hand is writing - there is a lot written about it. The scarcity comes in the form of value.

For every nugget of useful information, I found myself wading through page after page of what I cal "persuasion filler". Which, when looked at from the angle of examples of influential copy writing..... might be considered useful.... but only as an example. Other than that there was little real value.

Something else that I noticed? The insanity of fake positivity that is almost mandatory in every top ten style, click bait, article that I have read in the past 10 years. This cheerleader, life-coach, vibe has lost its charm. I have learned to recognize this technique as a poor mask of the uniformed writer. Hoping that you won’t question their ignorance with a front of their version of the prosperity gospel. Any version of dissent, is an admission of failure,

If I were to judge the merit of the advice from these articles in terms of quantity, then I would be left to assume that anyone can make a living as writer, starting as soon as next week. It was easy, and fun! What are you waiting for!

The paradox involved, is that while quantity can sometimes lead to earning a few bucks, it only works because the information has little value. These articles end up becoming a sort of mental trap for the intended readers. Click bait headlines filled with promises luring in trusting readers, only to have the chance to expose them to cheap, low brow, advertising schemes that keep you up at night.

After a short time being exposed to this sup par content, what I found was that the more that I read, the more anxiety I started to feel about the whole process. Tale after tale of people who had once been a lowly beginner like me. So many testimonials about the "lifestyle", and how easy it all could be, that I began to feel inadequate. I even succumbed, much to my utter embarrassment, to one of the ads that promised to reveal "secrets" about how to break into the industry.

It started with a $25 "sale" on one seminar, and I was suckered into flushing over $100, with lure after lure, that the next seminar, or book, or program, would reveal the secret to earning money. The approach varied. One ad was selling access to the best freelance job-site, another offered to mail me the secret formula to success. My personal favorite was the offer for access to the magic money making mailing list filled with the addresses of important people with connections.

I finally realized that I was on a wild goose chase, and that the "secret" to the six figure income that these people made from selling copy, came from the pockets of suckers like me.

The whole experience left me feeling defeated. If it was so easy to become a paid writer, why was I having such a hard time? I had submitted a few articles that had been rejected, and the idea of a portfolio scared the heck out of me. Finally I stopped listening to all of the canned, pep rally style advice, and began to rely on my own interpretation of the world. I decided to try trusting my own instincts. I finally feel like this is something that can be done. Something that I can do.

I am not going to tell you that there is a secret formula. I also don't believe that all of that time I spent was wasted. Not completely anyway. But in the end, time is money, especially to someone who is selling their skills in the freelance marketplace.

I am writing this because when I began this journey, I wish that I had come across at least one article that was not full of assurances about how easy it was to make a living as writer. I remember feeling alone, because it wasn't as easy as I was told. I thought that maybe I wasn't cut out for the job. All that positivity doesn't work for everyone, especially when most of it is based on half truths.

I am not writing this to discourage anyone, actually my goal is the opposite. This was written to remind writers everywhere of an important truth.

Failure is the best path to greatness. Don’t let anyone try to sell you otherwise.