Funding the Early Stages of a Writing Career

By Denise Turney
Your dreams of striking it big as a writer might take a few months, or years, to manifest. Before your dreams manifest, sitting in front of a computer screen, creating cliff hanging scenes, may not generate enough income for you to pay all your expenses. To keep moving forward, you’re going to have to find a way to fund your writing career.

Ways to Generate Income as a Fiction Writer

Some obvious ways you can fund the early stages of your writing career include getting a full-time or part-time job or starting an online business and selling digital products or services. If you want to have enough time to continue developing interesting novel plots, unforgettable characters and engaging dialogue, consider getting a part-time job. You could also start freelance writing for business clients, people who are looking for professional writers to help them market and sell their products and services.

Other steps you could take to fund the early stages of your writing career are:

  • Blogging (setting up your own blog using platforms like WordPress, Bravehost, etc. and adding affiliate ads to your blog so you can start earning money)
  • Teaching writing courses (you could teach a writing course at a local community college or you could start your own online writing course, asking attendees to pay a fee to attend webinars, etc. you lead)
  • Advertising business products (if you start your own radio show, you could reach out to businesses and establish marketing arrangements with them where they pay you a certain amount of money a month to advertise their products or services on your radio show)
  • Writing non-fiction articles and feature interviews for magazines, newspapers and journals (resources like Writer’s Digest, The Writer’s Market, Literary Market Place, Media Bistro, Journalism Jobs, etc. post writing job openings)
  • Edit other novelists’ manuscripts (I know of a few people who have earned money doing  this; it’s another way to stay close to writing while you earn an income)

Each of these steps does more than help you start generating additional income. The steps also allow you to continue to use and sharpen your writing skills. For example, if you worked as a copywriter, you could earn $50 an hour, developing banner ads, print ads, brochures and blog posts for clients. As you complete your writing assignments, you could also learn new ways to work with editors and strengthen your time management skills so you always meet deadlines. You could also discover new ways to market your novels, something that will definitely benefit you as you continue to move your writing career forward.

Thank you for reading my blog. To learn what happens to Raymond, Brenda and the other characters in Love Pour Over Me, hop over to Amazon.com, B&N.com, Ebookit.com, or any other online or offline bookseller and get your copy of Love Pour Over Me today. And again I say – Thank You! Consider Love.