In this article, we’ll look at how to make a living as a writer. We’ll start by writing letters and articles for newspapers, magazines and online publications, and graduate to writing books later. No experience necessary – we’re starting from scratch here.
In these troubled times, many of us feel … well, troubled.
If you have a job, you probably hate it and it eats up all your time, but you have to keep working because you need the money. (Even though it’s not nearly enough.)
If you don’t have a job, there are plenty of vacancies, but either they don’t want you or you don’t want them – I mean, who wants that sort of job?
Wouldn’t you rather … write a book or something?
Okay, maybe writing a book is too big a step at this stage if you haven’t written anything before.
(But if you fancy giving it a go, check out my books The Fastest Way to Write Your Book and The Fastest Ways to Edit, Publish and Sell Your Book.)
Let’s start with something simpler
How about writing some letters? That’s easy enough, right?
So, what will you write about?
Well, it needs to be something that interests you (because writing should be fun and interesting) and it needs to be something that interests other people. Does that help?
Okay, so what newspapers and magazines do you read? Do any of them have readers’ letters pages? If not, go shopping and look for an interesting publication that has a letters page. Let’s write a letter for them!
What will you write about?
Historical anniversaries are my suggestion: this day in history, the 100th anniversary of Interpol (September 2023), the 175th anniversary of the invention of chewing gum (also September 2023), that sort of thing. Readers (and radio listeners – another potential market) love this stuff. They’re really easy to research and write, and there are so many that you should always be able find some interesting ones.
Where do you find them?
Well, definitely don’t start by searching online. Yes, there are lists of anniversaries, but they’re not particularly helpful for our purposes. For example, Wikipedia has a long list of anniversaries for each day of the year, but nobody has heard of most of them, most of them aren’t notable (as I’ll explain below), and a lot of the dates and facts are just plain wrong. You could waste a lot of time here – or write a letter or article that’s full of errors, which is even worse.
Wouldn’t it be better if there was a book that listed all the good anniversaries months in advance, and they had all been properly checked? There is! Check out The Date-A-Base Book.
(Don’t rush off and buy a copy just yet. I’ll show you how to get some of the anniversaries for free – as well as other bonuses – at the end of this article.)
How to do it
Let’s jump ahead: you now have a good list of notable anniversaries in front of you.
1. Choose an anniversary
Browse through them and have a look for one that’s interesting (to you and to the readers of whichever newspaper or magazine you chose).
There’s no shortage of great anniversaries to choose from – there are at least 3,000 in each annual edition of The Date-A-Base Book.
2. Select a market
Let’s say you’re really interested in cycling (for example). So are lots of other people. And there are several good cycling magazines available. You’ve found one that has a readers’ letters page and a “star letter” spot too, for which you can win a small prize. Perfect!
Now, hunt through your list for some good cycling anniversaries: a notable race, the birth or death of a famous cyclists, the invention of an important bicycle component, the founding of a major bicycle manufacturer – anything like. It needs to be a notable anniversary – the 50th, 75th, 100th or 150th, for example – not the 23rd, 87th or 119th, which no one is particularly interested in.
(The Date-A-Base Book only lists notable anniversaries.)
3. A little bit of research
Once you’ve chosen your anniversary, you can look it up online. Google is the best starting point. Wikipedia isn’t bad either. But don’t trust anything they say without checking it properly.
See what you can find out about the anniversary. Look for facts that are interesting and intriguing, but most people might not know. You want something that will make your readers say, “Oooh, I never knew that!”
4. Write a letter
And then you can write your letter telling the readers all about it.
Don’t write a long letter: check how long the other letters are, and keep yours around the same length. You won’t have much space, but cram in as much as you can, and make it as entertaining and informative as possible.
If your letter isn’t published, just try again. Choose a different anniversary (or a different cycling magazine), write another letter, and keep trying until you succeed. (You will succeed.)
5. Repeat.
Keep doing this until you’ve had several letters published, and (ideally) won the “star letter” prize at least once as well.
How to make a living as a writer
Now, you might be thinking, why I am writing all these letters if I won’t get paid for writing them? Well, this is all about getting people to notice you – especially the editor.
This would be a great time to ask the editor if he would be interested in some short articles about other anniversaries. Send him a quick email, mention your letters that he’s published, and enclose a sample article to show the sort of article you’re planning to write. Just like your letters, it should be interesting, intriguing, and highly entertaining.
Hopefully he’ll say yes – and he’ll tell you how much he’s willing to pay you for writing them.
After that, just keep sending new articles in every month. You now have a regular slot in the magazine, and a regular income from writing.
You won’t make a living as a writer just by writing small articles for one magazine, of course. But there are other tens of thousands of other magazines in the world, and they’re all just an email away. You might end up with regular slots in dozens of them, if you can write that many articles each month (which you can – see my free guide below!)
And then write a book – the easy way
After a year or two of writing articles, you might have enough of them to fill a book – or, more likely, several books on several different subjects, all of which you’re interested in. Turning them into books is exactly what I suggest you do. And you can mention your books (and where to buy them) at the end of each article you write – so your books should pretty much sell themselves. And then you really will be making a living as a writer!
More information (free!)
By this point, I’m sure you’re crying out for more details and proper instructions. It’s all very well saying things like “turn your articles into books”, for example, but how do you get your books published and printed and distributed? How do you even contact newspaper and magazine editors in the first place? What exactly should you say to them to persuade them to accept your articles?
All the information you need is right here in my FREE 68-page guide Ditch Your Day Job. It walks you through the whole process in easy steps.
You get some really useful bonuses too, including a free ebook of 301 article-writing ideas.
Hop over to ideas4writers.com now to grab your copy of Ditch Your Day Job. It’s a free download, and you’re welcome to forward it to anyone who needs it.
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Dave Haslett is the founder of ideas4writers and the author of Ditch Your Day Job, The Date-A-Base Book series, The Fastest Way to Write Your Book, The Fastest Ways to Edit, Publish and Sell Your Book, How to Win Short Story Competitions (co-authored with Geoff Nelder), a 35-volume collection of ideas for writers, and more.