Dan Jones
Write.
I meet a surprising number of people - young, old and in between - who tell me they want to be a writer, then go on to say that they have never written anything. Well, sure. I want to be a rock god and headline Coachella, but the last time I played guitar seriously I was sixteen. You have to put the hours in - or in the case of writing, the words.
Practising writing is free. Publishing is easier than it ever has been, thanks to the internet. Getting paid for writing is a different matter, and there are different routes to writing professionally depending on what it is you want to do, be it books, screenplays, long-form journalism, newspaper reporting, scurrilous celebrity tittle-tattle, fiction, non-fiction, advertising copy or TV listings. I can't provide an answer here that will be relevant to all, or indeed many, of those fields.
But I can say that you won't get anywhere unless you are already writing: learning your craft, working out your style, contacting other writers, studying other writers' techniques, etc.
If you *are* doing those things, then congratualtions. If you are any good, then success lies close at hand. Just beyond the riverbend, as they say.
I meet a surprising number of people - young, old and in between - who tell me they want to be a writer, then go on to say that they have never written anything. Well, sure. I want to be a rock god and headline Coachella, but the last time I played guitar seriously I was sixteen. You have to put the hours in - or in the case of writing, the words.
Practising writing is free. Publishing is easier than it ever has been, thanks to the internet. Getting paid for writing is a different matter, and there are different routes to writing professionally depending on what it is you want to do, be it books, screenplays, long-form journalism, newspaper reporting, scurrilous celebrity tittle-tattle, fiction, non-fiction, advertising copy or TV listings. I can't provide an answer here that will be relevant to all, or indeed many, of those fields.
But I can say that you won't get anywhere unless you are already writing: learning your craft, working out your style, contacting other writers, studying other writers' techniques, etc.
If you *are* doing those things, then congratualtions. If you are any good, then success lies close at hand. Just beyond the riverbend, as they say.
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