Member-only story
Advice I’d Give My Younger Self About Writing
Practical advice about making a life as a writer
Writing, like most of the arts, tends to be low-paying and lots of work. Also like most of the arts, it’s often necessary to sell out in order to survive. It is still possible to make a living as a writer, and a few select writers — think Stephen King, JK Rowling, George RR Martin — will make a fantastic living, but those are few and far between.
There are a few things I wish I’d known when I was younger to make navigating life as a writer a little easier:
I wish I’d earned my degree in communications rather than creative writing
This one is a no-brainer, but at the time, I was super naive. The only reason I chose to major in creative writing is I didn’t know what else to major in. I didn’t think I’d like journalism (that would turn out to be a very bad assumption) and “communications” sounded too much like “sales” and “ad writing” to me. Of course, back in the early 90s when I got my degree, we didn’t yet know how computers would change the fields of writing and journalism. As soon as I graduated, I landed a job with a small newspaper and absolutely fell in love with journalism — and then journalism as a career kind of took a nosedive when the internet took…
