How To Get Started Writing? I Have No Idea

After read­ing a rather bab­bling mind-flush I had vent­ed into a friend­ly design-related forum I con­tribute to, some­one asked me how to get start­ed writ­ing articles.

To be hon­est, I don’t know.

I real­ize that may sound incred­i­ble con­sid­er­ing the fact that I write four reg­u­lar online columns and I’m writ­ing a book. The truth is, I’m still try­ing to find the time (and a knowl­edgable resource who has the time to answer a few ques­tions) to learn about how to begin get­ting arti­cles pub­lished in news­pa­pers and magazines.

I’ve done things kind of back­ward with regard to writ­ing, which is typ­i­cal of my entire career in and around the design field.

People who are famil­iar with my life/career (all the same, real­ly) know that I don’t have a degree (despite a long­ing for one, just for the sense of accom­plish­ment), but that that did­n’t stop me from going free­lance at age 14, own­ing an agency that ser­viced the likes of Time-Warner and Playboy by age 24, and being tapped by Adobe for a job teach­ing the design busi­ness and Adobe soft­ware to their Tech Support peo­ple a few years ago.

Somewhere in just indulging my pas­sion for design and try­ing to be a good design­er, I did or said some­thing that got peo­ple call­ing me an expert (accord­ing to a Florida tech recruit­ing com­pa­ny this past Monday, some “big name” peo­ple are still say­ing I’m the expert in cer­tain exist­ing and new design and print tech­nolo­gies like VDP). So, when I approached a start­up blogging-for-business com­pa­ny with an idea for two design-related blogs, they signed me up on the spot. Together we built the Magazine Weblog and the Design Weblog, which lat­er led to star­ing the (Unofficial) Photoshop Weblog.

Since my great­est area of inter­est in this car­ni­val we call the design busi­ness is design­ing for print, I’ve always had a fond­ness for page lay­out soft­ware like InDesign, Quark, and PageMaker before them. Being, at the begin­ning, an Adobe employ­ee and Technical Lead to Technical Support for InDesign and InCopy (as well as sev­er­al oth­er core prod­ucts), I had ter­rif­ic insight into InDesign. So, I start­ed writ­ing about the titan­ic bat­tle between Quark and InDesign on my per­son­al blog, which, a few months ago, offi­cial­ly spun off into its own brand­ed website/blog. There again, peo­ple start­ed call­ing me an expert.

I get quot­ed and inter­viewed fre­quent­ly, and the com­pa­ny that books my train­ing assign­ments uses my blogs to estab­lish my cre­den­tials to prospec­tive clients. Funny enough: Even peo­ple who nev­er worked with me at Adobe Tech Support refer Adobe cus­tomers to my columns/blogs!

Years ago I start­ed writ­ing a fic­tion book, and I did research on the top­ic of writ­ing for that pur­pose. The sin­gle most fre­quent piece of advice I read was “write what you know.” It nev­er made much sense to me, prag­mat­i­cal­ly, until this moment. I know the design busi­ness, work­flows, the tools, the mar­ket, and the design­er’s men­tal­i­ty. So that’s what I write.

Moreover, I write for me. I write what I choose (most­ly), what excites me. Because the sub­ject mat­ter is my favorite hob­by and has been my career for many, many years, I write arti­cles, tuto­ri­als, and, now, a book (or two, but we’ll talk about that fur­ther down the road), for my own enter­tain­ment. I love shar­ing my knowl­edge in the hopes that it might prove help­ful to some­one, but I also enjoy the hell out of writ­ing about my passion.

I just write. As ludi­crisly sim­ple as that sounds, I sim­ply write. Writing has brought oppor­tu­ni­ty to me. I’m writ­ing an Illustrator book; for the most part, the pub­lish­er came to me, not the oth­er way around.

I’m an intel­li­gent per­son, with sol­id mar­ket­ing acu­men and a 1950s-esque work-until-I-drop work eth­ic, but I’m not an aggres­sive pro­fes­sion­al. I don’t go out and pur­sue career oppor­tu­ni­ties with any­where near the fer­vor many would think. If I did, I would prob­a­bly be in a very dif­fer­ent place. When an oppor­tu­ni­ty comes along, I’m smart enough to rec­og­nize it and make the most of it, though.

For now, I’m just enjoy­ing the ride, lov­ing every new chal­lenge in this fan­tas­tic car­ni­val ride I call a career.

Hopefully in my expe­ri­ences above is an answer or a clue that can help address the orig­i­nal ques­tion. If any­thing stands out in my mind it’s the old writer’s mantra: write what you know. That’s all I’ve done, and it seems to work for me.

So, if the ques­tion is: “how do I break into writ­ing?” I’m sor­ry. Contrary to the fact that I’m a pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ist who writes (among oth­er things) for a liv­ing, I don’t know the answer.