This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 45: Careers For Writers.

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah Werner, and today I want to talk about taking writing from a hobby to potentially a full time gig. I want to be very careful and not say, take writing from just a hobby to a full time gig, because I don’t want to belittle hobbies. Hobbies are really important. It shows that you’re interested in something for yourself, purely for yourself, for your own enjoyment of doing something regardless of whether or not you’re getting paid for your time. So over the years, I’ve met a lot of people who have a very common complaint. Sarah, my job is toxic. My job is soul sucking, all I do is sit there and make money for someone else by doing the most menial tasks possible, or I’m not doing anything creative and I feel like my soul is just slowly crumbling, like a little dead leaf in autumn.

I don’t want this to happen to you, I like you. I want you to be happy and fulfilled in your work. Chances are when people say this type of thing to me, they’re not doing what they want to do. They’re feeling trapped in a cubicle, in a work environment that’s not healthy in a number of different ways and they feel like they don’t have a way out. And that’s really what I want to talk about today. Today’s message is going to be, you are not trapped. You have a choice in what you are doing for your career, and if you don’t like what you’re doing, or if you’re in a place where you’re not doing anything at all, then it is possible to make a change. It can be difficult and it can be a lot of hard work and it can be a slow journey, but it is possible.

If you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time, you might be familiar with my own work history where I have worked in at least one soul sucking job, probably more, but the number one most toxic and soul suckingiest job was predictably the one that I was in right after I graduated from college. I graduated as an English double major. And once you graduate, nobody cares what you majored in, but I’m telling you this because it backs up the reason that I graduated full of so many high ideals and fun fact, I was going to go on to graduate school, to pursue a doctorate in Victorian Studies. I was going to ideally become a professor, but life and finances don’t always turn out exactly how we think they will. And while I got into a number of different schools, I quickly realized that the price tag was a little bit out of my comfort range.

And I actually had a really great conversation with a professor whom I just admire dearly. And I remember our conversation vividly to this day and I spoke with him and I said, I want to be a professor. And he said, okay, Sarah, I get that. And I hope that you become that one day, but I want you to really think about what you’re getting into. Being a professor is not the sort of pinnacle of academic achievement. You don’t get there and just sit around drinking beer with students and talking about your great love of literature and poetry. In fact, he said, there’s quite a lot of bureaucratic red tape that I think would frustrate you. And there’s a lot of debt that goes into higher academic endeavors. And quite frankly, the market is flooded right now and tenure is going away. And Sarah, I really want you to be happy with what you do, but I want you to know that this is not the only way that you can be happy.

I realized that he was not trying to discourage me from doing something that I would love. So next thing I knew I was graduated and I was on my way to Chicago. So I started my job, which was as a software license agreement analyst. I’m going to let that sink in. If you’re familiar with what a software license agreement is, those things that you click past when you’re updating your version of iTunes or whatever other software you’re installing that license agreement, it was my job to analyze these for an HR software company and to determine whether or not a company was over it’s allocated into permissible number of users. I quickly learned that working in a glamorous building in a glamorous city is not as glamorous as expected.

It was up on the 22nd floor and a little styrofoam cubicle, and everything was beige and pale blue, but not a pretty type of pale blue. It was a very dirty type of pale blue. And it was hard to find people who had my interests. And after months and months of reading and analyzing software license agreements, I quickly realized that I was in what they call a soul sucking job in a toxic environment. And here’s the interesting thing, I hated my job. And since it’s been 10 years and I hope that she does not listen to my podcast, I will say I hated my manager. She was not a nice person. And I would go home every night, just angry. I was so angry and upset and frustrated at life. I knew zero people in Chicago, except for my coworkers who didn’t care about me, not to make this into a sob story because everybody goes through something like this, but I just felt so alone and angry and frustrated.

And what did I do with those emotions? I channeled them into my writing and I started a new novel. I sat down at my desk, in my little garden apartment and every night I wrote and it was wonderful. So a couple of years went by and I fell into marketing. I moved out of Chicago, got married, bought a house and all that stuff. Currently, I’m working for a wonderful company with coworkers who I can say that I dearly love and count among my closest friends, doing creative work, doing challenging work, doing strategy work. That’s interesting. But the other interesting thing, aside from the work is the fact that it’s so much more difficult for me to write for myself. If you’re listening to this right now, and you’re like, geez, come on, Sarah you told me you were going to talk about writing career paths. I am, don’t worry. I have them written down on this little list right here next to me.

But before I get into that list, I want to raise the question of what type of writing you want to do and whom you want to do that writing for. And I’m saying this purely because of a personal experience that I had, and that was whenever I was not challenged at work. Whenever I was frustrated in my day job, I would go home every night and write up a creative storm, I was unstoppable. But the moment that I landed a creative job, where I get to write every day at work, I soon realized that I was spending my creative energy at work and coming home and not having a whole lot left for myself. I don’t know if this is universal, it might be just me. I know there’s a beautiful quote by Maya Angelou that says, and I’m going to paraphrase it because I don’t remember it perfectly, but essentially it says you never have to worry about running out of creative energy because creativity begets creativity.

And that might be true for you. It might be true for many or most writers, but I know that when I come home at the end of the day now, I’m exhausted and burned out. So what I’m saying is I’m going to give you a list of different writing careers that you can pursue. But I want you to think about whether you want to do writing as a paid gig or whether you want to keep it as a hobby. And again, I do not want to devalue hobbies. I really don’t. They are so important, which is why this podcast is about work, life and writing balance writing/passion project/creative project. Whatever that hobby is, I feel like it is a crucial part of our lives, but that being said, I surely and certainly appreciate the fact that sometimes you just want to get paid to do what you love.

You want to get out of that toxic and soul sucking work environment, and work with people who appreciate writing, work with people who understand what it means to be a creative soul. I get it and I’m doing it now and I’m happy. And I feel like that’s important to tell you. So let’s dig into this list, starting with number one, a copywriter. This is perhaps the most obvious one on the list, but it’s also one of the most complex because there’s a lot of different paths or spokes that come out of this profession. So a copywriter is simply someone who writes for someone else and it gets paid to do it. There are different types of copywriters. So people who write copy, which is what we call text. It doesn’t mean that you’re copying someone else’s work. If you’re talking about doing copywriting, there’s a few different channels that you can pursue.

The first one is that of a technical writer. So if you’ve ever purchased anything ever, that needs instructions, that instruction manual, that was written by a technical writer, or if you’ve ever been on a website like amazon.com and noticed that there are product descriptions with each of the products that you can buy. Those were written by somebody, they were written by a copywriter. Technical copywriters can also write internal communications for hospitals or large corporations. They can write textbooks of all types. They can write legal documents. Think about all the things in the world that have words on them, chances are a copywriter wrote that. A technical copywriter is perhaps not the most glamorous of the roles that I could have started with, but I think it makes for a very viable writing career. And again, while it may not be glamorous, it can be very interesting.

I’ve done technical copywriting and learned about all sorts of things from slipform construction, all the way to product descriptions for banking products. If you’d like to learn and research and conduct interviews with people that can be a very viable way to write every day and get paid for it. I’m going to talk about three types of copywriting of which the first is technical. And there’s also three ways that you can do each of these. So for technical copywriting, you can work in-house, which means you can work for the organization or company that needs the writing done. So say you are working for a camera manufacturer and they need you to write product descriptions for all of the different lenses for the cameras, et cetera. So maybe you’re working in-house for an organization or a company, you can also work for an agency, which is what I do.

So I work for a marketing technology agency and we do all sorts of technical writing and other types of copywriting for our clients. And so then you get less depth and more breadth of the things that you’re writing about because clients change from week to week. Finally, you can also do freelance technical writing, and we’ll talk more about freelancing a little bit later, but that is essentially when you kind of hire yourself out and do different projects as they arise. Okay. So the first of the three types of copywriting is technical copywriting. The second one that I’d like to talk about is ad copywriting. And this is copywriting that you would do for advertisements or marketing. This could include writing digital ads. So the ads that appear in the sidebars on Google, it could mean writing billboard copy, print ads, radio and TV spots, PR pieces, even email marketing. So those emails that you get in your inbox from different companies and organizations that you’ve subscribed to, somebody writes those, that person could be you.

There is an endless need in the marketing and advertising world for good writers, so please do consider that as well. When I first started in marketing, I said, Oh man, I’m selling my soul. And I’m working for the very thing that as a poet and a deeply idealistic and naive person that I was sworn to reject, but really it’s not that bad. You can write ethically. You can choose where you work. You can choose the type of marketing that you’re doing, engage whether it fits within your moral parameters. Finally, the third type of copywriting that I want to talk about is web writing. The other two technical and marketing/advertising often find themselves on the web, but there’s a difference in writing for print and writing for the web and people who write for the web purely will do mostly digital ads or they might do website copy. All of those that you visit the copy on those, the writing on those websites were done by a web copywriter.

And there is a huge and growing need for good writers who know how to write for the web. I say this because I work for a marketing technology agency and we have trouble hiring good copywriters. So please know that this is an in demand skill. Writing for the web means that you need to know how to connect not only with people and engage people that you’re writing for, but you also need to know some different what we call SEO elements. SEO stands for search engine optimization and back in the early 2000s, this meant keyword stuffing and all sorts of kind of manipulative and irritating practices. Oh, I could do probably a whole episode about this, but I won’t, I’m going to keep this short.

So three different types of copywriting, technical, marketing/advertising and web copywriting. If you are interested in web copywriting, I suggest that you pick up the book Letting Go of the Words by Ginny Reddish and that’s Ginny, G-I-N-N-Y Reddish. I think that you’ll find it really useful. Similarly, if you’re interested in the marketing advertising writing, I do suggest that you check out some books about how to write for those audiences and for technical writing, it would behoove you to look at the basics for that as well. The next writing career that I want to talk about is journalism. And I know right now you’re saying, Oh, Sarah journalism is dead, haven’t you heard? But it’s not dead. It’s just changing. This is one of those fields where jobs are available, but they are extremely difficult to get if you don’t know the right people, or if you don’t have the right kind of portfolio.

And I just want to be really clear and honest with you about that. Chances are you’re not going to stroll into a world famous magazine or newspaper headquarters and end up editor in chief. It’s not easy. And in fact, like so many other of these facets of writing careers, getting into journalism is largely all about who you know, and I know that’s not fair, but it also doesn’t necessarily mean you’re at a disadvantage. If this is something you’re interested in, and if you have time, go back and listen to episode 43 of the Write Now podcast, it’s all about networking and meeting other writers and how to meet the right people that you need to meet. And while journalism may appear to be “dying”, I think it’s actually thriving online. I mean, sure, a lot of different publishers are still trying to figure out this whole, how do we get paid? kind of thing.

So you’ll see some publications putting up paywalls or having you answer survey questions before you can read articles or the Harvard Business Review gives you a certain number of articles you can read before you need to subscribe. But I think that they’re going to figure that out. Also, I don’t think that people generally go into journalism to make the big bucks. They go into journalism because they are deeply curious and deeply interested in discovering truth and sharing important stories with people who need to read and hear them. If you’re looking to get started in journalism, once again, meet the right people. So people who are current writers and editors for publications, whether in person in your local town or online, offer to freelance.

It won’t be the type of thing where you can quit your soul sucking day job right away, or perhaps at all. But you’ll have a creative outlets that you are being compensated financially for. So number two, journalism, it is an option. Number three is interesting to me and it’s always been interesting to me. And that is because it has called ghost writing. And it always sounds like such a saucy fancy title. Like, I’m a ghost writer, really ghost writing means that you are writing something on behalf of someone else and they get the credit for it. It does tend to pay rather well, depending on whom you’re writing for. However, the downside is that often you cannot tell people what you have written because it’s supposed to look like the “author” of the book wrote it themselves. I have ghostwritten three books, but I can’t tell you what they are or who I wrote them for.

But I did really enjoy the time that I spent ghostwriting, it was thrilling, it was challenging. And I do look to do more of that in the future. So generally in my experience, ghostwriting has been largely nonfiction. So memoirs, autobiographies, sort of self-help or how to books. I haven’t really heard of a lot of fiction or poetry ghostwriting, but maybe it’s out there, maybe it’s not. So ghostwriting is certainly a good option and it can be extremely well paying depending on your level of expertise and how many different projects you’re able to get. Number four is something that I’m going to admit to you that I don’t know a whole lot about because I’ve never done it. And this is grant writing or grant proposal writing. So often nonprofits or anyone else looking for government or charitable funding, we’ll hire a writer to do a very specific type of technical writing called grant writing.

And so they hire writers to essentially ask for grant money. This can be a great option if you are very detail oriented, if you are interested in writing grants, which I’m going to admit to you right now, I am not. I hope that doesn’t close any doors for me in the future, but it just not one of the things that seems appealing to me. But if you are interested in doing good, well paying, writing work that serves a cause that you are passionate about, then grant writing might be just the thing for you. If you do want to think about grant writing, this I would consider taking a course on, or at least getting several books and reading up on it. It tends to be a very specific type of writing that needs some very specific skills. So look into it if you’re interested and if not, that’s okay.

Number five is freelancing. And I’ve talked about this a little bit earlier with copywriting and journalism, but when you’re a freelancer, it means that you take on different jobs. You don’t work for a corporation or any sort of entity. You work for yourself and you take on projects as they come. You can freelance pretty much anything, you can freelance doing resume and cover letter writing and reviewing. You can freelance journalism. You can freelance ghostwrite. Freelancing is a very interesting and unique beast. And usually when I talk to new college grads, they’re like, Oh yeah, I’m just going to freelance for a while because the freedom of working for yourself is really appealing. However, there are two downsides to freelancing that I want you to be aware of. Number one, generally you don’t get a benefits package. And so you end up paying for healthcare, all that other stuff you don’t necessarily get, an employer match 401k. So please do be aware of that.

You also will need to pay taxes unless the person who is hiring you is withholding taxes from your pay. So just know that that can get a little dicey if you’re not aware of that going into it. And then you spend your entire check and then later realize that yikes, I need to pay stuff. The other sort of downside to freelancing is the uncertainty of the work. So working for your soul sucking day job right now, you’re getting a steady paycheck, I’m assuming you’re getting a steady paycheck maybe I shouldn’t make assumptions, but I’m assuming that you’re doing this because it is steady and reliable employment. If you’re doing freelancing, the downside is that, Oh, you could have projects for the next three weeks. But then after that if the well dries up, your bills don’t stop coming.

Your student loans, electricity, internet, phone, water, whatever you’re paying bills for they don’t stop coming. Maybe if you are very good continually getting work, maybe if you are freelancing exclusively for someone and that is very steady work, then that can be great. But otherwise freelancing well, freeing and lovely also tends to be a little unsteady, but if you’re comfortable with that kind of risk, then I say, go for it. Number six is a proofreader/copy editor/editor. So for these types of jobs, you’re not going to do a whole lot of original writing, but you will get to work with words for a living. So for me, I did freelance editing for a while and I really enjoyed it. I got to work hard to make someone else’s work really shine, and I got paid for it and I got my name in it. And it was cool, I liked editing. Again, this is something you can do in-house at an agency or freelance.

There’s also different sources if you look online for proofreading and editing and copy editing rates, and there’s also writing rates out there, you can see how much you’d be getting paid per project, per word, et cetera, based on your skill level. So if you like working with words, if you have a good eye for detail and a taste for how language works and doesn’t work, then this might be a great idea for you. Number seven, a blogger. Now, okay, chances are, you will not make a full time living as a blogger, but it can still be an avenue to both a very fulfilling and satisfying writing hobby and a potential for revenue or making money. Many bloggers will use their blog to run space for advertisers and make a little bit of money that way. Some of them compile blog posts into an eBook or book and later sell that.

So there’s a lot of different things you can do with a blog, including using it as a destination for your hobby writing. It’s a great way to build up your name and your reputation, and to get practices a writer while you’re doing your soul sucking day job. If you leave that day job to go look for employment as a writer, you can point to your blog and say, Hey, I’d be a great fit for this technical copywriting job because I’ve been writing blog posts about the importance of so and so tax something somethings since 2012, a blog is a great way to get your name out there and to build your expertise and to practice writing. So again, not an instant money maker, not something that you can just quit your day job and say, I’m going to be a blogger because realistically, that might not work out super well for you, but Hey, maybe it will, in which case I want to know. I want to talk to you, but it’s a great thing to do on the side.

Number eight, content strategist. Okay. So this is what I currently do for my day job and I love it. I get to write a little bit, but mostly what I do is plan out the strategy for our copywriting team. So that means that for all of our website projects, because we build a fair number of websites, I get to plan out the information architecture. So how the different chunks of web copy will live and how people will access them. I map out where people will go from this piece to this piece, to this piece. I do user experience analysis, which means essentially, Hey, who’s going to be reading this/engaging with this content? And is this the best way we can be presenting this to them? Is our content usable and useful? This is one of those jobs that I did not know existed until I got the job.

Growing up for years and years they tell you, okay, you can be a teacher or a doctor or a firefighter, or what have you. They never tell you, Oh yeah, you could be a UX content strategist, or you can be a web developer, or you can be a freelance copywriter. They don’t tell you these things. So those of you who like planning out how writing is going to work and affect people, think about being a content strategist. If you want more information on content strategy, just shoot me an email at hello@sarahwerner.com. Once again, that’s H-E-L-LO-O@S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. Content strategy, it’s fun. Number nine is again, a little bit different than the other ones that I’ve been talking about. And this is volunteer writing. It’s maybe a little bit like the blogging that I mentioned earlier, but instead of being for yourself, it’s for someone else, for perhaps a cause that you care about, a charity that you want to further. So basically I have a very good friend who donates a lot of her time to doing copywriting for our local animal shelter.

So she writes the little bio’s for the animals that are up for adoption and has done a significant chunk of work on writing their website copy. And she does it for free, but it also is a great way for her to serve this organization and to get writing practice in and to sort of get her work out there. So some people do writing for their church, or they do writing for an extracurricular program that they’re invested in. There’s just a lot of places out there that need help from a skilled writer. And if you have that time to donate, then by all means, go ahead and think about doing it. As I’ve said before, yes, you do deserve to get paid for the writing that you do. But I usually talk about that in terms of being taken advantage of. I don’t want you to get taken advantage of, but if you do want to donate your writing and your time to a cause or an organization that you care about, that’s close to your heart, that has an agenda that you’re really passionate about, then I say, go for it.

All right. Number 10. This is the last one that I have on this list, although it is by no means the end of the list of careers that a writer can have. And this is purely as a creative writer. Similar to copywriting, this has two different avenues that you can go down. For creative writer the first of these is someone who writes creatively for someone else, for an organization, for a company, for Hollywood, what have you. This is where you’ll find screenwriters, script writers, people who work in publishing and write blurbs for things. Even people who do something called content marketing, which is where you write short creative pieces that companies use to engage with their audience, much like journalism jobs. These jobs are difficult to get and often take a while to get there.

But again, they are available. I had a recent coffee break episode with screenwriter, Andrew Chapman. If you’re interested in hearing what it takes to be a screenwriter in Hollywood, I highly recommend that you listen to that episode. It should be available on iTunes, my website, just look for the name Andrew Chapman and give his episode a listen. He has a great take on screenwriting. Finally, the other side of creative writing is writing for yourself. This is when you decide to take the leap and say, I’m going to write for myself. I’m going to write creatively full time. I’m going to try to make it as a novelist, as a poet, et cetera. First of all, I say Bravo to you. I admire that you want to do that.

Second of all, I say, don’t quit your day job right away. I know you want it to be free of that terrible place that you feel so trapped and stuck and leached of your soul. But I also want you to take care of yourself. I don’t want you to suddenly be thrown into panic and say, if my novel doesn’t well, by December 31st at the end of this year, I’m not going to have a house anymore, or I’m not going to be able to eat or feed my kids or pay my student loans. It can be so tempting to go up to our boss and say, I quit. I’m going to be a full time novelist, screw you. And while that might feel good at the time, I don’t know if it’s necessarily the soundest financial decision. It also puts a tremendous amount of pressure to create. If you need to rely on your novel writing or your poetry writing to sustain you or you and your family, I don’t know if you’ll enjoy the work as much as you do now.

So what am I saying? Am I saying, sorry, you’re stuck in this dead end job for the rest of your life while you work on your novel and nights and weekends for the rest of your life? No, no, I’m not saying that. I’m saying you can have the life that you want, but you might not be able to jump toward it right away. Or maybe if you look at your finances, maybe you are able to do that right away. Maybe you can take a six month writing sabbatical and finish a book and then find a new job. I mean, I can’t tell you how to make that decision. I can tell you that I want you to make a smart decision that will not leave any of your family or dependence in the lurch.

I do know that many, many, many writers who have published and done well do have day jobs and that’s okay. It’s realistic and it may be disappointing for you to hear that. And I’m sorry if it is, but it’s also honest and it’s true. And I deeply, deeply from the bottom of my heart, I want you to know what is true and what is good. And what is true and what is good is that you are a writer and you’re doing the very best that you can with what you have. And if you’re stuck in a soul sucking toxic day job, get out, don’t quit and decide you’re going to become a poet because there’s not a ton of money in poetry, but do go find a new job that is more tolerable. Go find a job where you can write a little bit every day, there are executive and administrative and editorial assistants that get to write and edit along with their other duties. There’s copywriting that needs to be done, there’s ads that need to be written. There’s grant proposals that need to be written.

The world needs writing just as much as it needs your own creative contribution, that novel that you’re working on when you get home from work every day. The poetry chat book that you wake up at 5:00 AM on Saturdays to work on. So I really hope I haven’t disheartened you. And as I’ve said in past episodes, if you’re writing, even if you’re not writing eight hours a day and getting paid to do it, you’re still doing something that you love, and that is a reward in itself. So I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear about your day job and how you work creative writing, or whatever type of writing it is you love to do into your daily life. I’m very interested in how people make it work.

I’m also curious if I have missed, Oh, I’m sure I have. I’m sure I’ve missed a ton of great writing jobs. And if you know of any more, if you are doing one right now, I would love to hear about it. You can either email me at hello@sarahwerner.com or you can go to my website, Sarahwerner.com and navigate to the contact page and fill out a little form that’s there. It’s easy. It’s quick. I’ll do my best to get back to you soon. I want to give a couple of shout outs today. One is to young podcast listener Ben S. Ben drew me this awesome picture and said that when he grows up, he wants to be a writer and he wants to drive a Lamborghini. And Ben, I think that’s awesome. Your picture is amazing. I have it up at work and it’s just awesome. I hope that you are able to do everything that you want to do when you grow up.

I was also going to do a book of the week this week, but I’m going to put it off for next week because this episode is already really long. Instead, I’m going to do something that I’m going to call pod crush. And this is a podcast that I am listening to. I listen to a lot of podcasts because they’re awesome. And I love being part of the podcasting community. And so this week’s pod crush is The Legends Myths and Whiskey Podcast. Notably, I want to shout out to show cohost Eric DeMott who gave me a lovely shout out in their podcast a while ago. So Eric you’re awesome. Legends Myths and whiskey is a podcast in which the two co-hosts retell famous legends and myths while also talking about their love of fine whiskeys. And so if that sounds right up your alley, give them a listen. They are out on iTunes. If you search for them, they are also at legendsmythsandwhiskey.com. So check it out if it sounds like something you’re interested in.

And once again, pod crush, I guess that’s the thing now. It’s the thing that I’m doing. I received a question this week from podcast listener Lance who asked, I was wondering in your opinion, has our technology hurt or helped writers as a whole? We no longer have many magazines or papers as an outlet to write, say, as in the days of Poe and Dickens and other great writers. With so many print outlets going out of business and now many charging just to look at writings, I was just wondering on your take. Lance, what a great question. I think that the future is really bright for writers, to be honest. I really do. I say this for a couple of reasons. The web is largely text-based and it’s enormously expansive. There are so many online publications that are rising with the fall of many print publications that I think it’s an even swap. I think what’s difficult is these online publications are not as universally known as some of the large print publications were.

And so it does take a while to search out the sort of online institutions that you would like to write for. But I think you can do it. Self publishing is also this beautiful, magical, wonderful thing that has arisen sort of with the decline of print publishing. And actually, I want to say, I read an article just a few weeks ago from The New York Times that print books are once again out selling eBooks. So interpret that as you will, but self publishing is a great way to get your work out there, distribute it for a very reasonable investment. Again, you can also even start your own blog. If you don’t find a publication out there that fits you, start your own blog, do guest posts on other blogs, build your online network. And I think that you’ll be pleased with the results. I hope that answers your question.

I tend to be fairly optimistic about the future. And I say that because part of my job as a content strategist is I get to keep an eye on Google’s algorithm. And I’m trying to find a way to say this in a very short amount of time, but Google’s algorithm and the algorithm for all search engines. So whether you’re on Bing or Yahoo or whatever you use to search for things online, those search engines are prioritizing good, fresh, engaging content, content produced by writers like you and me. So I think that the future of online writing is really bright. That’s my two cents. Once again, if you are interested in a career as a writer, I’ll run through my list of 10 things. Again, you can also find this list in the show notes for today’s episode, episode 45 at sarahwerner.com.

These are number one copywriter of which there are technical, marketing/advertising and web. Number two, journalist. Number three, ghost writer. Number four, grant writer. Number five, freelancer. Number six, proofreader/copy editor/editor. Number seven, blogger. Number eight, content strategist. Number nine, volunteer writer, and number 10 creative writer, whether for an organization or institution or for yourself. I really hope that you took away a hopeful and positive message from today’s episode. What I was trying to do was let you know that you are in charge of where you work. If you are miserable, please find something that will make you less miserable. You don’t need to quit your day job to become a poet, as much as I think a lot of us would like to, but you can move to a place that’s a little less soul sucking. I want to make sure that I’m giving you good advice, that I’m setting realistic expectations for you. And so I hope that today’s episode was helpful.

As always, I would like to thank those of you who support the Write Now Podcast, especially my Patreon supporters. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform that allows you to give a dollar per episode, $2 per episode, a million dollars per episode, whatever it is that you feel appropriate, I would especially like to thank official Cool Cat, Sean Locke, official bookworms, Matthew Paulson, Amanda Antonelli and Rebecca Werner and official rad dude, Andrew Coons. Thank you all so, so much. I don’t know what I would do without you. If you would like to become a supporter of the Write Now podcast on Patreon, you can go to patreon.com. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/SarahRheaWerner, S-A-R-A-H-R-H-E-A-W-E-R-N-E-R. And there you’ll find all sorts of different levels of giving. It’s kind of like a PBS pledge drive a little bit. There’s cool prizes at different levels, and you can choose however you want to do that.

If you want to support the Write Now Podcast in other ways, first of all, if you’d like to support financially, but don’t want to use Patreon, go to my website, Sarahwerner.com and navigate to the tip jar. And there you’ll see options for donating via PayPal as well. So if you want to do that option, that’s awesome. More power to you. If you would like to support the Write Now Podcast, but you don’t really have money. If you are a starving artist or strapped for cash or what have you. I totally understand the best thing that you can do to help me out is just spread the word, tell other people about the Write Now podcasts. Let other writers know that there is someone out there who is cheering for them and wants them to write and succeed. So let them know about the Write Now Podcast, pass along the URL to my website, or let them know how to find me on iTunes, click the subscribe button, and they’re all set.

So thank you so much for wanting to help support this show. If you would like to get in touch with me, you can email me at hello@sarahwerner.com. Again, that’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. Or you can navigate to that websites and go to the contact page and fill out the little form that’s there. It’s easy to do, it just asks for your name, email, and a message. And those do go right to my email inbox. So go ahead and fill that out if you are interested in doing so, I’m happy to answer questions there or address any concerns. I hope you don’t have concerns with my podcast, but if you do, I would love to address them. Finally, one other thing you can do on my website is sign up for my email mailing list. This is a great way to keep up to date with all of the stuff that I’m doing here at the Write Now Podcast.

You can sign up in a couple of different places on my website. First and foremost, at Sarahwerner.com. There’s a black bar that goes across the top of the website and a place that you can put your email address. Otherwise, you can navigate to the contact page and there’s a link to it there. Or you can even go out to the Write Now podcast, Facebook page and click the blue sign up button, which will sign you up for my mailing list. So whatever of those you choose, I hope you enjoy getting emails from me. And with that, this has been the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps aspiring writers and all writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I am Sarah Werner, and I want you to write.