Career Directions Advice
by Shan Shan Li, Web Content Manager
Shan Shan is a graduate of the University of Western Australia in Psychology and English. She is also a graduate of Curtin University of Technology in Finance and Accounting. She joined the Advantage program at the beginning of 2005 and since then has been involved in various roles at AELC. She currently holds the role of Web Content Manager. It has been an exciting and passionate experience working at AELC which she trusts will continue in the future.
| Arts Degree - Making a living off your writing |
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An Arts degree is a hard sell in the current job markets. I am close friends with some brilliant individuals who left university with Honours and PhDs in English, History, Anthropology and so forth. Most of them consider themselves to be creative in one form or another and want to write for a living. Unfortunately, finding a job that pays well in their industries is frustrating at best, impossible at worst. The battle for most authors is one of creativity and sustainability. For every JK Rowling there are millions of unknown writers trying to make a living out of their dreams. A well written book or article does not pay the bills without a paying audience. The cold hard truth is that an average advance for a novelist per annum is $5000.00. Yes, you heard right! You get $5000.00 per year. To make matters worse most publishers will take anywhere between 12 to 18 months to publish a manuscript. Publishers will not distribute more than one book per author on a yearly basis. Add to that the hard reality that there is no guarantee that you will be picked up by a print publisher. I’m not sure about you but I can’t live on $5000.00 a year that may or may not exist because the publisher doesn’t pick me from the pile. So, how do you go about finding a paying audience? Well, after much hair pulling and loss of passion, a few of my friends started free lancing via the internet. The great thing about the internet is that you are not excluded from writing jobs just because of your geographic location. Instead of fighting for those jobs that are bound within Australia, most of my friends are writing for international magazines, online content and some are even paid bloggers. Some months are better than others, and it isn’t an easy job by all means but it provides them with money, flexibility and a chance to flex their creative muscles. Below are links that lead to some freelance opportunities. Have a careful look and don’t be afraid to use Google as a way to find more job opportunities. http://aboutfreelancewriting.com/jobs/currentjobs.htm http://www.online-writing-jobs.com/jobbank/ http://www.writejobs.com/jobs/ http://www.freelancewritinggigs.com/ http://www.placesforwriters.com/
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