Learning to Write Professionally

Writing professionally can mean a few things. The first thing that pops to mind is writing as a major, if not sole, source of income. Another definition of the phrase "writing professionally" could be using writing to formally communicate with others in the workplace.

For this story, the majority of the explanation will pertain to the former explanation - writing for a living. It's worth noting that you can still likely apply at least one of the areas touched on below in a professional, formal setting, for what it's worth.

Publishers Marketplace ran a 2018 survey that found median income for full-time, published writers in the United States was $20,857. Compare this to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2018 report that the median income was $62,170.

The discrepancy is blatantly obvious, though the reasoning behind it isn't clear. The University of London asserted in 2014 that writers' income reports that indicate higher earnings are likely due to these studies being largely populated by people who've written their entire lives as a source of income.

Here's the important thing: you should never quit a job to become a writer unless your writing efforts have consistently generated enough money for you to comfortably live on for at least a year.

Also, most writers don't author books. A good starting point is to sell your writing online using established websites that may offer competitive rates. For this reason, you may have to write thousands of words per week to generate an income you can live on, and sell the rights to many of these works and allow someone else to claim them as their own.

The first thing you should learn is that there's no such thing as an objectively good blog post, article, or book. While we can certainly compare writings of similar format, content, and purpose to one another, as well as stack them up against one another to determine the better piece, no single work is objectively good.

What's important to keep in mind is the audience you're writing for. This single-handedly determines how you should write, what style guide should be referred to, and more.

Paid writers often write for clients that request specific articles, topics, keywords, structures, and styles. If you don't write in a manner that pleases the client, you wrote poorly. If you do please the client, your piece is good.

If you get paid from visitors clicking on your own site's ads or publish an article using an intermediary that pays you based on page views, top-to-bottom reads, or reader interactions, the more people who like your stuff, the better piece you have.

You need social media profiles to market your writing. At the very least make a Twitter for marketing your writing that's separate from your personal account.

Become part of the existing communities that are interested in whatever topic or topics you write about. Build up a large follower count naturally. Regularly interact with them and make Twitter friends.

You'd be surprised by the number of people who don't know how to follow up on an email. You need to learn about the modern conventions for business writing, whether through a relatively recent textbook found in a library, via a college course, or through openly-available information found online.

In order to go anywhere in life, you need to maintain meaningful, worthwhile connections with other people - and not just anybody, either. Learning about, understanding, and staying on top of business communication is equally important as anything else to becoming a professional writer.

There is no comprehensive guide online or in libraries that is tailored to your specific situation that will tell you exactly what to do to become a paid, professional writer. However, if you have passion for writing about one topic, practice extensively and get other's opinions about how to improve, and have a little bit of luck, you'll be as good as gold!