Photo: Spunir (CC0)
Job description
The creative process typically starts with research, gathering factual detail or personal experience to ground a piece, before moving into drafting plot, characters, or lyrics and revising repeatedly to meet personal or publisher standards. Most of the work happens independently, without a supervisor setting daily tasks, and a finished piece is prepared to editorial or industry format before submission to a publisher, producer, or label. Many writers in this field supplement creative output with related work, such as teaching, editing, or ghostwriting, especially early in their career.
Pros
- Standard, predictable hours often under a full 40-hour week, unusual for creative fields
- Faster than average projected job growth (3.6%) for creative writing work
- Highly independent work, with control over subject matter, form, and creative direction
Cons
- Pay for most working writers sits well below the $140k ceiling, which only a few reach
- Income is often irregular, tied to publication deals or royalties rather than a steady paycheck
- Success requires sustained rejection tolerance since publishers and producers turn down most submissions
A typical day
Most working writers guard their mornings: two or three hours of drafting before email is allowed to exist — maybe 800 words of a novel chapter, maybe wrestling one stanza into shape. Midday shifts to the business half of the life: sending a story to literary magazines, invoicing a freelance piece, researching a period detail that one paragraph depends on. Afternoons might mean revising against an editor's notes, which can feel like rebuilding a house someone else lives in. Many writers trade evenings for workshops, open mics, or a co-writing session — and nearly all pair the writing with teaching, freelancing, or a day job that pays while the long projects grow.
Tasks at the job
- Write fiction or nonfiction prose, such as short stories, novels, biographies, articles, descriptive or critical analyses, and essays.
- Develop factors such as themes, plots, characterizations, psychological analyses, historical environments, action, and dialogue to create material.
- Revise written material to meet personal standards and to satisfy needs of clients, publishers, directors, or producers.
- Choose subject matter and suitable form to express personal feelings and experiences or ideas, or to narrate stories or events.
- Prepare works in appropriate format for publication, and send them to publishers or producers.
- Conduct research to obtain factual information and authentic detail, using sources such as newspaper accounts, diaries, and interviews.
Workplace & working conditions
Most of the day is spent sitting at a desk.
You're expected to exercise significant independent judgment day to day. The work is highly structured, following set procedures. Much of the work is done independently.
Education necessary or common
Bachelor's degree
Common college majors
Related fields
Courses to take
- AP English Literature — close reading is how writers learn their craft
- AP English Language — argument, style, and rhetorical control
- Creative Writing — dedicated workshop time with feedback
- A foreign language — new grammar rewires how you hear your own
- History — source material and depth for every genre
Clubs, activities & competitions
- School literary magazine — editing one is even better than publishing in one
- Scholastic Art & Writing Awards — the major national competition for teen writers
- Poetry Out Loud — national recitation competition
- NaNoWriMo — draft a novel in a month alongside thousands of others
- Open mic nights at local cafes or libraries
First steps you can take now
- Write every day for 30 days — small and daily beats big and occasional
- Submit one finished piece to a teen literary magazine or the Scholastic Awards this month
- Read one poetry collection and one story collection like a writer: mark what each choice is doing
- Join or start a writing group that exchanges honest feedback
