Although I didn’t go to school with the intent of becoming a freelance writer, I did get my English degree so that I could pursue a career in writing.

After graduating, however, I realized that this would be a very difficult thing to accomplish. I applied to a number of small-time newspapers looking to get a job and even considered living homeless in downtown Vancouver and writing a book about my experiences.

My English degree taught me a lot about grammar, 20th Century Literature, poetry, and essays…but it didn’t teach me how to make money. It’s sad really, coming off the high of graduation and then facing the real world where people don’t care if you can write essays or not.

It was a major transition for me - one that led me to a sales job before finally taking a stand and deciding that I would do whatever it took to build a writing career for myself - and now I’m here to disclose the 10 things that I didn’t learn in university.

1. How to Write Cover Letters: You need to write a cover letter every time you bid on a project, contact a publisher, or send an email asking for work. I can’t believe they didn’t teach me how to do this in university. Oh sure, I knew how to write an email and introduce myself…but not effectively.
2. How to Find Work as a Writer: An English degree is great…for almost nothing. Most English majors take their degree and turn it into a masters or go into law. I considered those options, but felt I had done enough schooling already and wanted some experience. So I searched for a writing job high and low before finding out that I would have to create my own if I wanted to write for a living.
3. How to Self-Publish: I don’t know if this is a generalization or not, but it seems like most English departments are stuck in the past. Not only did I never learn how to create a blog or eBook while I was in university, but I never even knew those types of things existed.
4. How to Write for Businesses: Most English professors see writing as an art form and believe that business writing is watered down. I agree, but I also understand that business writing pays the bills. Creative writing is great and I had a lot of fun learning about writers of the past, but I wish I didn’t have to teach myself how to write an effective press release, create catchy web content, or build a high-converting sales letter. For the money I spent to get my university degree, I should have been rooming with Dan Kennedy for four years.
5. How to Promote Writing Services: Not only did I never learn how to find work, but I hardly even knew what kind of work I could offer. Do businesses need essays?
6. How to Write to a Targeted Reader: I never learned how to write for anybody other than my teachers. I guess in a way I did learn how to write for a target market, just not a market that could make a whole lot of money.
7. How to Build Relationships: Freelance writing only 50% about writing. The rest is about building relationships and running the business. University didn’t prepare me for the real world where I would have to knock on doors, introduce myself, and convince people that I was worth their time.
8. How to Write Killer Headlines: Did I learn how to write incredible memoirs and short stories? Absolutely. But I didn’t learn how to write headlines that pulled people into reading what I had to say, nor did I even understand the importance of a killer headline. Heck, I thought headlines were only meant for newspapers.
9. How to Write Like I Talk: As Dan Kennedy says in his book, The Ultimate Sales Letter, “schoolbook grammar is irrelevant in the sales letter…when you go to the bank to deposit all the profits your sales letter produced, nobody will ask whether you dangled a participle or split an infinitive while you were making money.” While a lot of the real-world writing is more formal, I am still having to un-train myself in order to become a better writer. I find myself cringing when I write copy that breaks the rules…but I know it’s the only way to make it work.
10. How to Use Lists: If my classmates weren’t forced to read my writing in class, they would have scanned it quickly and seen no reason to look any closer. I wasn’t taught how to write for scanners and in-depth readers alike. I guess it all boils down to the fact that I was taught how to write for books and literary magazines instead of blogs, sales letters, or websites.

I am very happy that I had the opportunity to go to university and learn what I did, but I never had a clue where to go after graduating. Like other graduated English students out there, I didn’t want to use my English degree to teach or to starve hopelessly while writing out a novel that wouldn’t be discovered for 200 years. I just wanted to have a career in writing.

While my university experience taught me a lot about the art of writing, it taught me almost nothing about making a living as a writer in the 21st century…but in the end, I still found I was more prepared than others looking to freelance for a living.

Popularity: 6% [?]