writewright

I bet you’re the kind of person that has a quick wit with words rolling off your tongue. Most people probably think you’re a bit shy and quiet…until they get to know you. Then they probably wish you were shy and quiet. 
All kidding aside, you are probably reading this blog right now because a little voice inside your head keeps bugging you about becoming a writer. I know that for a fact, because that darned voice worked on ME for a number of years before I finally decided to give writing for a living a try.

There’s a kind of romance about writing. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but when someone asks you what you do for a living, “I write” seems to capture them in a type of awe. Maybe it’s the thought that writers are world travellers. Or that they are on the verge of some great and illustrious recognition for their writing, like a Pulitzer. Maybe it’s the concept that writers are rebels, and in some enigmatic way, they are able to open their wings and fly above the heads of all those other people stuck, wallowing on the ground.

For whatever reason you are enticed to begin writing for a living, Welcome. This blog is here to help you to fight your way through the slime of writing ignorance, and hopefully get you onto the “dry ground” of making money with your writing. The path isn’t as tough as you might think it to be…the hard part will be training your  focus on developing the writing skills to become a writer an employer is willing to pay to write.

WHAT DO WRITERS WRITE ABOUT?

Writers put pen to paper for a number of reasons. Writing is a way of communicating information from one person to another. Writing can give instructions, elicit warnings, sell ideas, kill political aspirations, blame, criticize, encourage, calm, scare, or simply make people feel good.

HOW DO I FIND MY FIRST WRITING JOB?

The person who wants to write is probably a writer already. The problem is, they just don’t know it, yet. If you have a collection of poems or songs stuck in a box somewhere in a closet, or a few notebooks jam-packed with ideas you’ve been jotting down for a while, you have the makings of becoming a writer. If you are a voracious reader, and think going to the library is better than going shopping, you are probably a good candidate for being a writer. If missplld (just kidding!) words drive you absolutely UP THE WALL–you are definitely missing your calling as an author.

In order to be considered a writer, you MUST WRITE. There’s no getting around this one! When you make an application for any writing job, you’ll be asked for examples of your writing. These articles don’t have to blow anyone’s socks off–but they DO need to be fully-formed thoughts with a beginning, a middle, and an end. All the fancy stuff that makes a written piece exempliary boils down to whether the written word captures the emotion of the reader or convinces them to take action based on what they’ve read. 

The first thing you need to do is look through those boxes, or page through those notebooks, and find 5 articles, blurbs, ideas, stories, or sentences contained in them to be used for your writing samples. They don’t have to be completed pieces–they only need to be interesting or informative.

To write, you can get by with an old typewriter, but what you really need is a computer. Take the time to learn how to use your computer’s word-processing program, then type each article or sentence into your computer. Give each of your 5 pieces a descriptive name and save it as a separate file. 

The pieces you choose to develop should be things you have an interest in.

Once you have your 5 pieces entered in your computer,  invest in a little hand-held recorder if you don’t have one already. I love my little SONY ICD P-520. I can record anytime, anywhere, and edit the recording right on my PC. I’ve gone through 5 recorders in the last 10 years, because I find a recorder an invaluable aid to editing what I write. So far, my SONY has lasted the longest.

Read your 5 pieces out loud into your recorder, and as you are reading them, remind yourself of places where the words are hard to read, sentences hang, or thoughts ramble on. Then play your recordings back and listen to them very carefully. You are going to develop these 5 pieces into examples of your writing, so you must be ruthless.

Ask yourself: Does the piece you’ve written make sense? If it doesn’t make sense, what is missing? Are sentences clustered together in paragraphs that tackle one part of what the article explains, then moves onto another  paragraph with another cluster aimed at providing information?  If your writing ideas were little more than a sentence or two to start, you’ll need to spend time researching your topics before writing about them. This provides more opportunity for practice. 95% of the writing I do requires me to research information to write an article. This is where the real challenge of writing shows itself … because writing demands that you THINK.


Many writing jobs are assignments which require you to take an idea and develop it. There are guidelines you are expected to follow when developing the content of an assignment, with a result the article is expected to accomplish. Very little writing is done to simply wow the reader with an author’s use of words. There is something to teach, to instruct, to sell, to stir curiosity about in every written piece. That’s the reason people take the time to read an article in the first place.


Once you have developed your 5 pieces to your satisfaction, you are going to use them to mock-up a practice assignment. Your assignment is to Write ONE 200-word article giving a short descriptive explaining what your 5 pieces are about. (That’s about 20-25 words per piece, allowing 50 words for an opening, and another 50 for the closing.)

Write an Opening introducing your pieces as examples of your writing ability. List the 5 articles, (1., 2., 3., etc.) giving each piece a descriptive SENTENCE of roughly 20-25 words. If one of the pieces is about a day at the beach, for example, the description for that piece might be something like this:

1. A DAY AT THE BEACH- When tides came in and energy ran out, we packed up our memories and tracked the sand home. (22 words)

Once you’ve edited all 5 pieces, and written your 200-word article about your pieces, save everything together in a folder named “writing samples”. Then when you have the opportunity to apply for a blog or freelance writing job, all you need to do is upload your samples to apply. 

Make the time to sit down every day and develop a new piece to add to your samples, or to replace samples as your writing improves. Also, by expanding pieces you already have, you may eventually find yourself with enough material to submit a magazine article or even a small book! You are on your way to developing your skills to write for a living.

All writing is a work in progress…you may have to re-edit a piece multiple times until it sounds exactly RIGHT. So get in there, and start working on those beginning pieces. Just consider it a test… to see if you really wanted to be a writer, after all.

-e.

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