Beyond the Page: What to Know About Modern Writing as a Career Choice

If you are thinking about creative writing as a career choice, no doubt you have thought that it’s a completely unattainable career, but it’s something that’s more within reach than most people realise.

However, it’s about understanding that writing as a career is not necessarily what you think it is. So, if anybody you know, whether it’s your child or you’ve thought about dipping your toe into the world of writing as a career, what is it you need to understand?

There’s More to It Than Just Putting Words on a Page

We could talk about the importance of grammar, structure, and form, but the modern approach to writing arguably covers one key thing that lots of people haven’t heard of: search engine optimization.

Search engine optimization, commonly abbreviated to SEO, is the practice of optimising content to ensure that it ranks higher on a search engine.

If you are writing content for someone else’s website, it’s critical to get an understanding of the basics of search engine optimization, including:

• Keyword research, which involves finding what specific people search for and then putting these keywords into your content and using this as a structure to form your content’s subject matter and the overall flow of the piece itself.
• Link building, which is a way to build trust and authority from other websites. If you start linking to other websites that are already very popular, this will, in essence, vouch for their authority and trustworthiness, which can push them higher up the search engine rankings.
• On-page SEO, which partly encompasses the layout of a piece of content, making sure that it reads well, and is broken up with images or bullet points if necessary.

There are a number of other components that are critical to search engine optimization. For example, the intent behind a searcher’s query, which is even more important now because if you are creating content that is irrelevant to a specific target audience, this will not necessarily rank well.

However, it’s important to remember that despite all of the numerous rules and regulations that encompass search engine optimization, the reason it exists is to guide people towards the most relevant search engine results for their query. 

So, in essence, if you are interested in creative writing as a career and you end up writing for a website that covers a number of different topics, as long as you are serving the subject matter authentically, this is all that really matters.

There is a lot to consider with regard to numerous SEO rules, for example, one known as EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness), but this essentially means that you just need to know what you’re talking about.

The Career Paths Are Almost Endless

We’ve talked about writing in terms of creating content, but there is more to it than just writing for a website, commonly known as being a copywriter.

There’s a wide variety of niches that you could get involved with. It’s just that for most people, doing copywriting is a great way to gain access to a lot more roles.

There are freelance copywriter roles on most freelance websites, including bloggers, marketing writers, technical writers, and so much more. 

However, in addition to these, there are other aspects of creative writing that you could easily fall into as well. These include speechwriting, which could form part of a communications role at an organisation, bid writing, which involves researching numerous components of a business in order to tender a contract that can either acquire more funding or specific clients.

In terms of modern writing, there is definitely more than one way to skin a cat, and there are a number of different specifications relating to each one. For example, if you are looking to be a journalist, there may be a lot more pressure to get the spelling and grammar perfect.

However, you could consult a number of online publications and run them through a grammar checker and find that they don’t pass muster, but it is certainly worth thinking about getting your spelling and grammar skills up to code if you are aiming for the stars.

You May Not Be Working By Yourself

In fact, it’s very unlikely you will be working by yourself. Writing in the modern day is a far more collaborative process.

The authors of books inevitably have to submit their manuscripts for editing and/or criticism, and if you are looking to work as a journalist, a marketing writer, a screenwriter, or even a video game writer, you will have to work well with others.

One of the toughest things about modern writing is that you’ve got to understand the people you are working with and what they want, which means that there could be a very long list of specifications. 

Writing to a brief can be tough when you begin, but you then start to figure out that as you progress, you know what works well for certain people and what doesn’t.

This is especially true in blogging for numerous clients. Some will have a very specific set of demands, which no doubt they have acquired through conducting their own search engine optimization best practices.

For example, keyword research, but over time, this will only serve to strengthen your writing abilities. 

Anybody starting out can find it incredibly tough to mimic other people’s tones of voice or have a number of criticisms that can be taken personally.

However, it’s all grist to the mill, and it’s about remembering that in any creative career, it’s important to have a thick skin. This will ensure that you focus on improving your writing skills, but as a career choice, being a writer does not involve one linear path; there are so many different options.

They all come with their own benefits and drawbacks and it’s just about making sure that you find the one that suits your needs. 

The world of writing is at a crossroads now, especially with concerns around AI doing a lot of writing, but even if you are looking to be a writer purely for the passion of it, there are still a number of avenues to pursue.