I am always interested when I see an online ad for writing jobs because, for one, I am a writer, but probably even more so because there are so many different kinds of writing gigs.
When many of us think about writing jobs, we imagine a newspaper position, or a novelist or short story writer, but there are many other kinds of writing jobs that rarely come to mind.
The other day I saw an ad asking for a writer who could provide 20 articles on food and nutrition for a new web site that was launching in a few months. The person who had placed the ad wanted them all within a month and was willing to pay $1,000 for the job.
What surprised me the most about this particular job was that it paid $500 to start, and $500 when the project was completed. All of the writing jobs I've had paid upon completion of the assignment.
I saw another position for a construction newsletter, which was one of the more interesting writing jobs I have seen because it paid a yearly salary, with health insurance and benefits, but was still considered a largely freelance gig.
One of the more interesting writing jobs I have personally been offered was to write a book on a type of cancer about which there is evidently not a whole lot of literature. That was one of the few gigs I actually ended up turning down, simply because I have mainly been a journalism writer, and did not really know how to approach writing an entire book.
I have seen ads looking for essay writers, poetry, and, of course, the more unscrupulous areas of adult material or college term papers. Writing jobs come in all shapes and sizes, and it is certainly not a one- size-fits-all kind of field.
I have always gravitated more toward newspaper and magazine writing because those are areas where I feel the most comfortable and know that I can do a good job. I have written a number of short stories and have attempted to write a novel, but those have typically not panned out for me the way that other writing jobs have.
The best advice that I can give to a person trying to find writing jobs is to look for something you can imagine yourself actually completing with a certain degree of competence, and then give it your best shot. I can say in all honesty that there is no worse feeling than getting into a writing job where you realize very early on that you have gotten in over your head, or really have no idea what you are doing.