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I'm an English/ Secondary Education major, and I'm obviously planning to go into teaching, but writing seems like a possibility, too. How would I go about becoming an established writer, and for whom should I write? Would it be to my advantage to get further certification, like print journalism, marketing, or public relations? What could I do until then?
That's not really something you can get "certified" in. Find out if there are writing societies or festivals in your area to submit writing to. You just need to keep doing it to get noticed, if that's what you want to do.
You have to write a lot, all the time, and submit things everywhere. Be prepared for a lot of rejection, criticism and hard work.
Teaching is a great career and writing is something you can pursue on the side if you are passionate. Dan Brown was a prep school English teacher for years before he wrote The Da Vinci Code. I don't think he's that great of a writer, but he does know how to tell a good story, and he learned that through years of practice. I used to use helium.com to find prompts and get feedback on my writing. It can be a lot of fun.
I agree with StinaTado completely. To be a writer, one has to be very passionate about something, to gain knowledge of that subject matter, always observing and learning and then practice. Oh well, sounds like I'm one, nope, I'm not. Why do I offer this advice? It's likely going to work!
There's a writing forum on here, too; you should check that out. As far as advanced coursework, I would not take that on yet. Maybe down the road you'll want to pursue that, but it would be a waste of time and money at this point if you're not sure what you want to write. You don't need a degree to get published. What kind of writing are you talking about? At the most broad, are you thinking fiction or nonfiction? As to how to get started: just do it. Start submitting things to your local papers. Start working on your novel, if that's what you're interested in doing. Try looking into all the specialized trade journals (maybe the NEA's magazine?) to see if they accept articles from freelancers; might as well combine your teaching work with your interest in writing.
I'm an English/ Secondary Education major, and I'm obviously planning to go into teaching, but writing seems like a possibility, too. How would I go about becoming an established writer, and for whom should I write? Would it be to my advantage to get further certification, like print journalism, marketing, or public relations? What could I do until then?
I hold the same undergrad degree that you are currently working on. I planned to go into classroom teaching, but determined after my student teaching that I didn't prefer it, in the end. While regrouping and determining plan B, a spent a year as a full-time volunteer with a domestic, AmeriCorps-like position and a year of paid grassroots nonprofit work with the agency for which I'd volunteered.
During that time, I decided I'd like to try my hand at community journalism. I got a job as a beat reporter with a family of community weeklies -one of the only mainstream newspaper niches not terribly affected by the decline in the newspaper industry until fairly recently, and still much more afloat than other print markets. After a year of reporting and photography, I became editor, which, in a small market weekly, means that you're still doing reporting and photography, in addition to typesetting, proofing, editing, page design/layout/paginating...pretty much everything but doing ad sales and running the press. I held the position for half a dozen years.
I was not required to have a degree in journalism...in fact, few in our newsroom did...our family of papers actually leaned more toward writers with English degrees, preferentially, which was what most of us held, including our sports writers. Community journalism, particularly for weeklies, which don't compete with dailies for breaking news, is very in-depth feature-heavy, versus strictly hard news reporting, and journalism majors often lean strongly toward the faster pace of dailies. The company found that those with other writing-related majors were happier and a better fit early on. They also found that in a feature-heavy paper that depends on original content (small communities don't like their hometown papers filled with AP wire stuff, they want to read about the local people and places they know, and they want it well-written), it pays to hire people who can tell a story with flair, not just string together a list of bullet points with a few quotes in inverted pyramid format. Every state press association writing workshop I ever attended was conducted by professional writers, most of whom had English backgrounds rather than journalism, to try and teach journalists how to effectively and memorably tell a story.
Since I had no portfolio of clips, I simply prepared a portfolio that showed my writing ability across a range of styles, which was enough to show the publisher and GM that I could write, and my interview showed them that I was personable enough to get the story and knew how to ask questions.
All training was on-the-job, which is pretty standard for entry-level print journalism. My education background and training made me a natural fit for the education beat and I was the go-to reporter for schools and board of education stories (although at that size publication, you really wear all hats). Because I had been trained as a teacher, I was more readily accepted and trusted by the local education community as a journalist who would get the story right, and was consequently able to turn out stories on that beat that blew our "competing" daily's out of the water.
Writing for print media, particularly feature writing, is a fantastic way to hone your writing skills, challenge yourself to produce under deadline, break out of your comfort zone, content wise, and keeps your skills very, very sharp. It was a great thing to do. Eventually, I moved back into teaching (a full decade after deciding to pursue other avenues!) and my experience as a professional writer is invaluable to me in the work I do now. It was also invaluable in forcing me to ditch my former demeanor, which was less outgoing and more shy, and become a more forthright communicator.
Print media is a field many are wary to enter right now, and rightfully so, but there are niches that aren't as doom and gloom as others, and there are jobs, though they're definitely not as easy to come by as they were ten years ago, and it's not an industry that pays well (not that teaching is, either). It can be gruelling, the hours can suck, and readers are quick to criticize and rare to praise. The workload can be quite hefty, in the current economic environment where it's common to downsize/furlough and distribute the leftover work to fewer employees with no compensation for the added work. But it is interesting, fun, and personally satisfying for those who love to write and like a varied work experience. And you don't need continued study in journalism if you are a strong writer, learn quickly on your feet, and have a healthy innate curiosity about pretty much everything that crosses your path, or a desire to learn about it.
Print journalism is a shrinking industry and a very tough place to make a living. Magazines are shutting down or shrinking in size due to lack of advertising. Newspapers are shutting down and/or going bankrupt and laying off people with years of experience. Many internships are unpaid.
Technical writing may offer some opportunities but it requires an understanding of what you're writing about -- technical knowledge.
There are opportunities to write online, but most don't pay much if anything.
If you don't want to teach, I would seriously consider finding another way to earn an income besides trying to write for a living. Writing for many people is a passion they pursue because they enjoy it while they earn most (or all) of their money from another job.
It probably depends on what kind of writing you want to do. Do you want to write news articles? Do you want create scholarly op-eds for a journal? Or do you want to publish your own novel? Each of those will require different skills and different career paths.
You don't generally just get paid for "writing"; it's assumed that everyone beyond grade school can do that. You generally get paid for writing insightful things about something you particularly know about. So what knowledge or ideas do you possess that other people would want to read?
I hope you aren't too attached to things like eating and having a roof over your head. Perhaps this is a bit harsh but it's not at all easy to actually earn a LIVING writing.
It probably depends on what kind of writing you want to do. Do you want to write news articles? Do you want create scholarly op-eds for a journal? Or do you want to publish your own novel? Each of those will require different skills and different career paths.
You don't generally just get paid for "writing"; it's assumed that everyone beyond grade school can do that. You generally get paid for writing insightful things about something you particularly know about. So what knowledge or ideas do you possess that other people would want to read?
Honestly, looking at a lot or the content that gets published during my years in print journalism, and looking at the "writing" that goes out to the public in my current field (education, terrifying), one would THINK that it's just assumed that everyone beyond grade school can do it...but that's sadly not the case. The ability to produce proficient, polished writing should be considered a basic skill. Unfortunately, it's not.
But I agree with the above. There are more opportunities for writing-related careers than the average person realizes (and many of them aren't in severely struggling industries like newspapers).
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