What are some careers for people who love to write?
Most careers require professional communication, whether it’s verbal, nonverbal, or both. Let’s get those writers involved by checking out some potential careers that demand a high level of written communication. To enjoy these careers and succeed at them, you’ll need to have a strong desire to write consistently.
Many people who love to write are already experienced for the workplace because they write in their spare time, try to incorporate writing into their careers, and write to express themselves. So while an English degree could back up your credentials, any experience with writing Web content or other published work could be enough to jump-start a writing career. Try reading through these potential options to see if one of them could be your dream job.
Freelance Writers
This job can be everything from a jack-of-all-trades career supplement to a very specific enterprise with a targeted group of clients. Concentrated areas of work include proofreading, editing, blogging, ghostwriting, creative writing (publishing short stories, poems, fiction, and more), offering your services as a writing tutor, and anything else that might involve writing.
Important skills for this type of work include the ability to write high volumes daily, a strong desire to learn and teach, and a willingness to do efficient, high-quality research on predetermined topics. Even fiction requires research to make it relatable, so a love of knowledge and insatiable curiosity are good assets for the freelance writer. To try your hand at this career, find potential clients on Craigslist or get a subscription to Writer’s Market for job listings and publication assistance.
Grant Writers
People who write grants are also expert researchers, but the information they search for tends to be more immediately applied than information collected by freelance writers. Rather than writing articles or stories, these professionals are writing grants, which determine whether or not nonprofit groups and organizations receive much-needed funds from donors.
In these cases, research involves determining a need for funds, identifying sources of information, developing a detailed description of the amount needed for the project, specifying allocation of funds, describing the special circumstances that necessitate the funds, and analyzing grant evaluation methods to establish best practices. It’s a lot of work and tends to require additional education and experience, but for those who love professional writing and nonprofit organizations, it’s a great fit.
Grant writers can be hired to remain in-house at large companies, they can work as employees in grant-writing businesses that operate in short-term contracts, or they can be self-employed.
Teachers and Professors
Just take a moment to think about how much writing teachers and professors do on any given day. There are lesson plans and syllabi that require writing, papers that have to be graded and returned with feedback, assignment sheets that demand creativity, and discipline-specific research that comes as part of the professor’s job description. Even though teachers and professors aren’t writing their students’ papers, the best writing analysts are writers themselves.
Content, style, grammar, spelling, and much more figure into grading students’ papers, and teachers wouldn’t be able to give accurate analyses of student writing without having a significant amount of personal experience. Professors also conduct independent research, publishing articles in scholarly journals and sometimes presenting their work at conferences. All teachers and professors are writers to some degree, and those who never tire of writing might consider teaching fiction, nonfiction, professional writing, or business writing. If teaching is the best way to learn, writing teachers and professors are some of the best writers around.
Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education performing research surrounding online universities and their various program offerings. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.