English departments could do a way better job of communicating the many avenues that an English major opens up to you. But instead they tend to whine about why kids aren't enrolling.
I understand you as saying that there are three career routes. One is a paid gig as a journalist. Another is freelancing writing corporate reports, blog content and newsletters. The third route is to go for broke and do what every English major really wants to do, to write creatively: genre fiction, non-fiction such as biographies and political analyses, and screenplays. A very, very few make enough to survive from their substacks. The two writers that I know write commercial stuff and columns in order to pay the rent. This enables them to write creatively without starving to death. The trouble is that their creative work isn't going to make the best seller lists. They might was well do what I did, which was to take a well-paying career and write in the evenings and publish through a vanity press and if each of my books has been read by twenty people, I'm... satisfied. Writing is something that you have to do like an addict needs to use or a gambler needs to gamble.
100% agree. I personally think the day job route is the better bit. You can live a bit more comfortably, get insurance for your family, etc, but also you can stay out of the rabbit race of trying to constantly publish and have takes/pitches about the day's news. That can really sap your creativity. Thanks for reading, Michael.
I understand you as saying that there are three career routes. One is a paid gig as a journalist. Another is freelancing writing corporate reports, blog content and newsletters. The third route is to go for broke and do what every English major really wants to do, to write creatively: genre fiction, non-fiction such as biographies and political analyses, and screenplays. A very, very few make enough to survive from their substacks. The two writers that I know write commercial stuff and columns in order to pay the rent. This enables them to write creatively without starving to death. The trouble is that their creative work isn't going to make the best seller lists. They might was well do what I did, which was to take a well-paying career and write in the evenings and publish through a vanity press and if each of my books has been read by twenty people, I'm... satisfied. Writing is something that you have to do like an addict needs to use or a gambler needs to gamble.
100% agree. I personally think the day job route is the better bit. You can live a bit more comfortably, get insurance for your family, etc, but also you can stay out of the rabbit race of trying to constantly publish and have takes/pitches about the day's news. That can really sap your creativity. Thanks for reading, Michael.
Totally. My whole job is to help visionary founder and CEOs put big ideas into “words.” It’s harder than it sounds :)
Love this Andrew! Feel like I should have met you when I was in college.
That would have been awesome! But I'm glad we met now, too.