In The Beginning...

...you should be writing. Almost anything: essays, articles, poems, letters, emails. Anything that keeps your creative juices flowing and exercises your writing muscles.

And you should be looking for likely outlets for your talent, investigating markets and writing for them. Seeing what you're good at and what interests you most. Sending proposals, drafts, outlines and completed items to the most likely publications.

In short, you cannot afford to be sitting there (or anywhere) gazing into space and waiting for inspiration or, for that matter, an agent or publisher to come knocking.

Send your stuff to specialist magazines, to free magazines and local directories. They're often strapped for cash and short of 'copy', so you're unlikely to be paid but you are likely to be published.

In the beginning, that's your aim. To be published, to build a portfolio of published work, and to improve your skills. You'll also expand your list of contacts, and 'real' work can come from the unlikeliest sources - you'd be surprised.

Writing is fun and satisfying and sometimes easy and often very difficult, but the world is full of the written word and someone has to create it. If you're a writer, then that's your role.

And mine.

So. Time to write.

Roy