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Do you have experience as a professional writer? I'm curious, how you think a person without a degree on journalism, writing, etc, can get a job writing? I'm a

Do you have experience as a professional writer? I'm curious, how you think a person without a degree on journalism, writing, etc, can get a job writing? I'm a software engineer, by the way. Not that I'm interested in changing my career or anything, but your comment was interesting and I do like writing, so I think it's worth knowing!

shagie 6y ago
Incidentally, Scalzi also had that problem. He wrote Agent to the Stars to try to figure out if he wanted to write and what it was to write. http://scalzi.com/agent/ http://scalzi.com/agent/ > In the summer of 1997, I was 28 years old, and I decided that after years of thinking about writing a novel, I was simply going to go ahead and write one. There were two motivations for doing so. First, I was simply curious if I could; I'd had up to that time a reasonably successful life as a writer, but I'd never written anything longer than ten pages in my life outside of a classroom setting. Two, my ten-year high school reunion was coming up, and I wanted to be able to say I'd finished a novel just in case anyone asked (they didn't, the bastards). > In sitting down to write the novel, I decided to make it easy on myself. I decided first that I wasn't going to try to write something near and dear to my heart, just a fun story. That way, if I screwed it up (which was a real possibility), it wasn't like I was screwing up the One Story That Mattered To Me. I decided also that the goal of writing the novel was the actual writing of it -- not the selling of it, which is usually the goal of a novelist. I didn't want to worry about whether it was good enough to sell; I just wanted to have the experience of writing a story over the length of a novel, and see what I thought about it. Not every writer is a novelist; I wanted to see if I was.
chrismeller 6y ago
I’m merely paraphrasing his thoughts, as a professional writer. In this case I do agree however. Perhaps full time journalism would be a bit different, but writing short stories, novels, or freelance news pieces is going to come down to sending it randomly to a variety of publishers and hoping they like it enough to actually speak to you. None of that process has anything to do with your “bonafides”, it has to do with writing well and composing a story (imaginary or otherwise) and some peon at the receiving firm actually liking it enough to bump it up the chain. While I’ve used this advice to write better (blog entries, emails, presentations, arguments, etc.) I have not even endeavored to do it professionally. It’s still been helpful for me.
pier25 6y ago
I'm not a full time writer but I do write as a freelancer from time to time. Lately, I've been writing technical articles for a tech company. It all started because I wrote a introduction to their product on Github and shared it on Twitter. They liked it, and contacted me to write more of that stuff. I'm sure there are plenty of tech companies that are willing to invest in producing content to get more exposure (guides, tutorials, videos, etc) for a new product.
calebkaiser 6y ago
It depends on what you mean by professional writer. Being a developer advocate, at many companies, is equivalent to writing full-time, and a software engineer who has recently developed an interest in writing is typically an easier sell for those roles than a writer who has recently developed an interest in code. This is basically true for all domain-specific writing jobs as well. Being an expert in the domain and being interested in writing is in many ways advantageous compared to being an expert in writing with an interest in the domain.
- ghaff 6y ago
  The caveat I'd make about devrel and related jobs is that they tend to be pretty people-oriented--which doesn't necessarily appeal to a lot of software engineers (or writers).
bonestamp2 6y ago
Any decent writer can make money from writing, but depending on how you want to be hired/paid then the approach could be very different. So, I guess it depends on... 1. What do you want to write? Ad copy? News? Fiction? 2. What do you bring to that subject matter that has value? Here's a real life example: About 10 years ago, a friend of mine was a business major and had a day job in marketing. He liked to write so he spent an hour every weeknight writing on his website. That website gained a following and with that proven success, he wrote a book proposal, shopped it around with some book agents, then they shopped it around with some publishers. They eventually got him a book deal. That book did very well and he got another book deal. Then one book was optioned for a movie. After his third book deal he was able to quit his day job. The movie option expired after two years and another studio optioned it. It has yet to be turned into a movie, but he continues to get paid by a studio who wants to prevent other studios from turning it into a movie before them. They may never actually do it though. He's written a few more books since then too. If you're thinking of writing a book though, the book itself is not where you make the money... you make the real money on whatever the book leads to: speaking engagements, movie options (fiction or nonfiction), other gigs that come from the awareness of you through the book, etc. I think it would be much harder to be hired as a journalist without a journalism degree, unless you demonstrate your journalism ability somewhere else first (your own website perhaps). As a developer, I think technical documentation could use a major improvement at many companies which might let you use both writing and development skills. But again, your journey to getting paid to write starts with knowing what you want to write.
- ghaff 6y ago
  You'll probably need a portfolio to get hired as a writer (or even into a job that has writing as a significant component). For journalism, the issue isn't the lack of a journalism degree--which many/most journalists don't have. It's the general lack of jobs, especially those that pay more than subsistence wages. (And, even then, a lot of them are at pretty low quality sites. And the sort of local newspapers that a lot of journalists got started at are gone in large part.)
ghaff 6y ago
I agree with most of the other comments but I'd also point out that I'm pretty sure the majority of journalists I know do not have journalism degrees although most probably have a liberal arts degree of some sort. (And J School specifically is viewed by at least some as an anti-pattern.) I'd also echo another comment that, as a software engineer, there are certainly jobs at many tech companies that involve a lot of writing/speaking.
Vmody2 6y ago
I'm a technical writer for a tech software start-up, but I started in sales. There's always some content that needs to be written. Blogposts, documentation, whitepapers, etc. I started by... well writing. I wrote a some blogposts, and a few of them trended on HN. Eventually, when we hired our CMO, he saw what I had been putting out and asked me to help out more. At a certain point, it made sense for me to transition entirely to writing. Since you're not a professional writer, don't expect to be given a lot of writing responsibility. You basically have to prove yourself. If you have an editor at your company, work with them. I didn't have any formal writing training, but I applied the feedback I got from our editor and slowly my quality improved. It took me about 4-5 months before I was fully trusted to write quality pieces without hand-holding. Given that you're a software engineer, you have the domain knowledge to write some very useful content. It's just about finding your style.
triceratops 6y ago
Writers, unlike most software engineers (save those who work on open source) can readily share work samples with potential employers. Other than that it should only be a matter of getting your resume past the filter that requires a writing or journalism degree. You also didn't specify what you meant by writing jobs, so it's hard to give more detail. Writing seems like programming in one respect: if you can do the job you can be hired, regardless of your education.

shagie 6y ago

Incidentally, Scalzi also had that problem. He wrote Agent to the Stars to try to figure out if he wanted to write and what it was to write. http://scalzi.com/agent/ http://scalzi.com/agent/ > In the summer of 1997, I was 28 years old, and I decided that after years of thinking about writing a novel, I was simply going to go ahead and write one. There were two motivations for doing so. First, I was simply curious if I could; I'd had up to that time a reasonably successful life as a writer, but I'd never written anything longer than ten pages in my life outside of a classroom setting. Two, my ten-year high school reunion was coming up, and I wanted to be able to say I'd finished a novel just in case anyone asked (they didn't, the bastards). > In sitting down to write the novel, I decided to make it easy on myself. I decided first that I wasn't going to try to write something near and dear to my heart, just a fun story. That way, if I screwed it up (which was a real possibility), it wasn't like I was screwing up the One Story That Mattered To Me. I decided also that the goal of writing the novel was the actual writing of it -- not the selling of it, which is usually the goal of a novelist. I didn't want to worry about whether it was good enough to sell; I just wanted to have the experience of writing a story over the length of a novel, and see what I thought about it. Not every writer is a novelist; I wanted to see if I was.

chrismeller 6y ago

I’m merely paraphrasing his thoughts, as a professional writer. In this case I do agree however. Perhaps full time journalism would be a bit different, but writing short stories, novels, or freelance news pieces is going to come down to sending it randomly to a variety of publishers and hoping they like it enough to actually speak to you. None of that process has anything to do with your “bonafides”, it has to do with writing well and composing a story (imaginary or otherwise) and some peon at the receiving firm actually liking it enough to bump it up the chain. While I’ve used this advice to write better (blog entries, emails, presentations, arguments, etc.) I have not even endeavored to do it professionally. It’s still been helpful for me.

pier25 6y ago

I'm not a full time writer but I do write as a freelancer from time to time. Lately, I've been writing technical articles for a tech company. It all started because I wrote a introduction to their product on Github and shared it on Twitter. They liked it, and contacted me to write more of that stuff. I'm sure there are plenty of tech companies that are willing to invest in producing content to get more exposure (guides, tutorials, videos, etc) for a new product.

calebkaiser 6y ago

It depends on what you mean by professional writer. Being a developer advocate, at many companies, is equivalent to writing full-time, and a software engineer who has recently developed an interest in writing is typically an easier sell for those roles than a writer who has recently developed an interest in code. This is basically true for all domain-specific writing jobs as well. Being an expert in the domain and being interested in writing is in many ways advantageous compared to being an expert in writing with an interest in the domain.

ghaff 6y ago
The caveat I'd make about devrel and related jobs is that they tend to be pretty people-oriented--which doesn't necessarily appeal to a lot of software engineers (or writers).

bonestamp2 6y ago

Any decent writer can make money from writing, but depending on how you want to be hired/paid then the approach could be very different. So, I guess it depends on... 1. What do you want to write? Ad copy? News? Fiction? 2. What do you bring to that subject matter that has value? Here's a real life example: About 10 years ago, a friend of mine was a business major and had a day job in marketing. He liked to write so he spent an hour every weeknight writing on his website. That website gained a following and with that proven success, he wrote a book proposal, shopped it around with some book agents, then they shopped it around with some publishers. They eventually got him a book deal. That book did very well and he got another book deal. Then one book was optioned for a movie. After his third book deal he was able to quit his day job. The movie option expired after two years and another studio optioned it. It has yet to be turned into a movie, but he continues to get paid by a studio who wants to prevent other studios from turning it into a movie before them. They may never actually do it though. He's written a few more books since then too. If you're thinking of writing a book though, the book itself is not where you make the money... you make the real money on whatever the book leads to: speaking engagements, movie options (fiction or nonfiction), other gigs that come from the awareness of you through the book, etc. I think it would be much harder to be hired as a journalist without a journalism degree, unless you demonstrate your journalism ability somewhere else first (your own website perhaps). As a developer, I think technical documentation could use a major improvement at many companies which might let you use both writing and development skills. But again, your journey to getting paid to write starts with knowing what you want to write.

ghaff 6y ago
You'll probably need a portfolio to get hired as a writer (or even into a job that has writing as a significant component). For journalism, the issue isn't the lack of a journalism degree--which many/most journalists don't have. It's the general lack of jobs, especially those that pay more than subsistence wages. (And, even then, a lot of them are at pretty low quality sites. And the sort of local newspapers that a lot of journalists got started at are gone in large part.)

ghaff 6y ago

I agree with most of the other comments but I'd also point out that I'm pretty sure the majority of journalists I know do not have journalism degrees although most probably have a liberal arts degree of some sort. (And J School specifically is viewed by at least some as an anti-pattern.) I'd also echo another comment that, as a software engineer, there are certainly jobs at many tech companies that involve a lot of writing/speaking.

Vmody2 6y ago

I'm a technical writer for a tech software start-up, but I started in sales. There's always some content that needs to be written. Blogposts, documentation, whitepapers, etc. I started by... well writing. I wrote a some blogposts, and a few of them trended on HN. Eventually, when we hired our CMO, he saw what I had been putting out and asked me to help out more. At a certain point, it made sense for me to transition entirely to writing. Since you're not a professional writer, don't expect to be given a lot of writing responsibility. You basically have to prove yourself. If you have an editor at your company, work with them. I didn't have any formal writing training, but I applied the feedback I got from our editor and slowly my quality improved. It took me about 4-5 months before I was fully trusted to write quality pieces without hand-holding. Given that you're a software engineer, you have the domain knowledge to write some very useful content. It's just about finding your style.

triceratops 6y ago

Writers, unlike most software engineers (save those who work on open source) can readily share work samples with potential employers. Other than that it should only be a matter of getting your resume past the filter that requires a writing or journalism degree. You also didn't specify what you meant by writing jobs, so it's hard to give more detail. Writing seems like programming in one respect: if you can do the job you can be hired, regardless of your education.