Writers Ear

One of my favorite writing-about-writing writers, John Hewitt at PoeWar, has said something that many writers don’t want to admit:

Writing isn’t like engineering or chemistry. Most people know how to write. There are people who write especially well, either because of training or talent, but there are millions of people who can write a basic article or blog post that is good enough for the Internet.

And that’s probably the main reason why writers don’t earn more, even why many writers have left the profession. I’ve gotten many jobs simply because I was paying attention in school when others weren’t. I sometimes get paid a lot for easy work, but as long as other people have neglected to learn how to do it, I’m glad to take their money.

The Internet means that no longer are you guaranteed a job as long as you’re the one of the sharpest people in town. Now you have to be one of the sharpest people in the world… because your competition is now worldwide.

Okay, so everybody who finished sixth grade is a writer. Then we need to be better writers. If everybody can do something, we’d better learn to do something that not everybody can do.

• Find a specialty. John Hewitt’s specialty is writing software documentation. He isn’t afraid of being outsourced.
• Find a mentor. Don’t stop learning. Your competitors aren’t. As a writer, you may feel threatened by the 90 million English speakers in India, but don’t look now: 300 hundred million people are learning English in China.
• Find a voice. Everybody can write, but nobody can write like you. Unless, of course, you’re trying to write like everybody else.