How to become a professional writer? What steps should I take at the start?
What kind of writing do you want to do? If you’re doing fiction writing, look for an editor near you. There are freelance editors who will help you submit your work to different publishers.
If you want to work for a company as a professional writing, you can do job searches on Monster.com. Use the terms “professional writer”, “technical writer” and “editor”. Some companies want a degree specifically in professional/technical writing, while others just ask for a degree in English or a related field. It helps to have a portfolio of work that you’ve done- manuals, instructions, reports, and so on.
Dependent on the type of writing you’re looking to do there are plenty of ways of becoming a professional writer. The best place to start is to look for writing courses. However; if you’re not looking to pay much for them there’s this website I use also for for upping my game in writing. www.alison.com it’s a free course site but the certificates are like $100 or less.
If you’re looking to go into journalism it’s best to start with basics such as starting a blog. WordPress is what I’d recommend using but write about your niche that your really good at. There’s also plenty of sites that will pay you to write for them. But if it’s self publishing your looking to do there’s two sites I can recommend to you they are www.createspace.com and www.kindle-book-publishing.co.uk however; if you feel your not ready for a proper publishing you can field test your work on wattpad.com. I found this very useful for testing my books before deciding to publish them! Hope this has helpd!
The first step you take is to determine what a professional writer means to you? What type of writing do you have a passion for? Do you want to write a book to have published or uploaded to an E-book on a platform such as Kindle? Do you want to write for a magazine and if so what type of articles or magazines do you want to write for? So really the first step in becoming a writer comes down to knowing yourself, your likes, your passions and in what direction you want to pursue writing and to what degree. Once you have decided that, you will be able to focus your attention on researching that specific genre of writing.
Depends on what you are trying to do when it comes to writing. One you should make sure that you have a writing portfolio going so start a nice website and add some blogs, articles ext depending on your expertise. If you are trying to work for a company a portfolio will help you out a lot but if you are looking into novel writing then this is something that you can do on your own.
You can become a self-published Author but remember that you have to make sure that your writing is good enough to be read by others. I worked for many different clients before I decided to become an Author and til this day I am still writing for others and working on my first Novel. Writing is something that you will still learn as you go so don’t go crazy if you don’t have everything down pact. Remember to have the necessary items down and you will be fine.
If you are willing to go fully professional then get a certification or degree in journalism or something along those lines. In my opinion, you don’t need all of that if you are trying to break out online but it is a plus. Good Luck and I hope that you find what you are looking for.
