Jobs for writers…
When I was young, I loved to draw and write. (Obviously, I still love to do the latter!) But when I started to think about how I might make a living in my teens—what any responsible lass or lad should do—I chose to focus on what’s now called STEM, figuring that would give me a lot more opportunities for gainful employment than writing fiction. Not that I didn’t love science and math—I did, and it came easy for me, so it was easy enough for me to acquire the necessary skills—but I loved writing even more. As a consequence, my publishing career only started in 2006, while I still had a day-job (not uncommon for wannabe authors).
From the time of that teenage decision, and before that first novel, I always wondered what opportunities could be coming along for writing professionals (even with my number of novels, I still consider myself an amateur, not a pro). After a few novels, I wandered into LinkedIn, one of the reasons being to answer that question. My initial assessment of that website was what might be common among authors: What was it good for in my case? Initially, I played around in the discussion groups, but Microsoft ruined those when they took over that website (just like Amazon has ruined Goodreads). With so many LinkedIn connections, my question continued, and I often asked people who wanted to connect with me if they could answer it. (By the way, for those nice people who want to connect, I rarely turn anyone down, but I generally do batch-processing on the requests, so please be patient. And you might expect that question!)
Recently, though, I decided that LinkedIn might be a good place to answer the first question in a context far removed from the teenager who asked it long ago: What jobs are now available for writers? In particular, is it now easier to make a living as a writer? LinkedIn seemed to be the most readily available place to find answers to those questions.
I was surprised—maybe astounded is the better word! Almost everyday I receive between ten and twenty job postings, all involving writing. These aren’t job offers, of course, and I won’t be applying to any of them. (LinkedIn hasn’t discovered I’m scamming them, payback for destroying the discussion groups.) But most of them didn’t exist when I was thinking about a future career. I should add that LinkedIn focuses more on my writing skills, which I have, and not on my STEM skills, which frankly are a bit out of date now. (The latter leads to some technical writing jobs, of course.)
Some jobs are onsite, which I’d never take now; others are work-at-home positions; and still others are mixed onsite and remote. Most of them, if I’m honest, seem interesting—or they would have interested that teenager long ago. And I don’t think I even added more traditional writing jobs like journalism or editing to my “desired positions,” the former seeming a lot more interesting now except for the fact that newspapers are dying.
That’s all good news for any young person who wants a writing career. Young people can write their great American novel in off-hours away from their their day-jobs if they want that too, but they can definitely make a living writing now. Maybe the latter could even involve writing fiction, the latter ubiquitous in many politicians’ speeches! Want to be a speechwriter?
At any rate, I consider my experiment a success. Most of the jobs in the LinkedIn postings didn’t exist when I was a teen, thus reaffirming that my choice of STEM was the correct one at the time. It also showed me that writers are in demand more now than ever before. That has to be a good thing, right!
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