What else is out there for Writers?

Whether you are in college for a BA in English, Writing, Communication Studies, Art, Psychology, etc., there are numerous options and paths to take to build your relationships in your careers. What could you do with your degree and if you have a knack for writing? Did you only thing that writers are only authors? Think again: You could be  in any field and you could still build a writing career. How, though?

Besides writing books and having a side-thing with that in correlation to your actual career (i.e.: Psychologist, Social Worker, Mother of 4, etc.), there are other careers to choose from on top of your career already. There is a great website called WritersDigest.com where you can purchase a book called, “Writer’s Market 20__” (depending on when you buy one, currently the 2013 issue is out) and it gives you an idea of what is out there.

I currently have the Writer’s Market 2013 Deluxe edition  and it gives the following: a guide to different literary agents, magazines, and trade journals along with a guide to how to write a good query letter. What could you do with these resources? Trust me on this from experience: you can start a career as a freelance article writer. Magazines are broad collections of articles within the same category (i.e: pets, children, music, pop culture, etc.) and writers can usually publish articles with them. Normally, you can submit numerous different queries and articles and you’ll possibly get published and paid.

How much does an article get? An Article can get as little as $0 to as much as $1700 (if not, more [depending on the magazine]). Once you get published with one, if you are consistent on top of querying magazines, you will get more writing opportunities. You could think of this as a snowball effect (roll a snowball down a hill and watch it grow). Sometimes, an article can only be 600 words to even 1500 words and you could possibly get between $50 to $800 consistently for each one (talk about an easy side job on top of your career). Trade Journals also work in the same fashion, but are more selective of their topics such as psychology, how to write, medical, technological advances, etc.

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