Writing Jobs Come In All Shapes And Sizes

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by: susanlantos
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Word Count: 468
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2012 Time: 7:24 PM

I am often curious whenever I notice an online ad for writing jobs because, for one, I am a writer, but probably even more so as there are so many different types of writing gigs.
When most of us think about writing jobs, we picture a newspaper position, or a novelist or even short story writer, but there are many other types of writing jobs that seldom spring to mind.
The other day I spotted an ad asking for a writer who could supply 20 articles on food and nutrition for a new website that was introducing in a couple of months. The person who had placed the advertisement wanted them all within a month and was ready to pay $1,000 to do the job.
What stunned me the most about this particular work was that it paid $500 to begin, and $500 once the project was finished. All the writing work opportunities I have had compensated upon completion of the assignment.
I found one more position for a construction newsletter, which was one of the more exciting writing job opportunities I have seen mainly because it paid a yearly salary, with health insurance plus benefits, but was still regarded as a largely freelance gig.
One of the more interesting writing job opportunities I’ve personally been offered was to write a book on a kind of cancer about which there’s evidently not a whole lot of literature. That’s 1 of the several gigs I actually ended up turning down, given that I’ve mainly been a journalism writer, and did not actually know how to approach writing an entire book.
I have come across ads in search of essay writers, poetry, and, not surprisingly, the more unscrupulous parts of adult material or college term papers. Writing job opportunities come in all forms, and it’s definitely not a one- size-fits-all type of field.
I’ve often gravitated more toward newspaper and magazine writing for the reason that those are areas exactly where I feel the most comfortable and know that I can perform a good job. I have written several short stories and have tried to write a novel, but those have typically not panned out for me the way in which other writing jobs have.
The very best advice that I can give to a particular person trying to find writing job opportunities is to look for a thing you can envision yourself actually completing with a certain degree of competence, then give it your very best shot. I can say in all seriousness that there’s no worse feeling than getting yourself into a writing job in which you realize very early on that you’ve gotten in over your head, or really have no idea what you are doing.