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EDITOR'S NOTEfrom
Layton Shumway
Luke's advice rings true for anyone, not just aspiring freelancers or folks in it for the dough (or for free games). No way around it: If you want to be a writer, you have to write. A lot. And as Luke says, writing about anything is much better than not writing at all.
Write Trigger: GET PAID NOW
Lots of you want to write about videogames, but playing forty hours a week and finding all the Chaos Emeralds doesn't make you an ideal gaming writer - it makes you an ideal gaming reader. The very existence of the sites and the few Giant Panda-like magazines you want to write for proves the existence of thousands of people with exactly the same qualifications. The most important piece of advice you'll ever get is is:
If you just want to write about games, don't just write about games.
Aiming for a career in games journalism is like deciding to be a dinosaur rider - it sounds awesome, but changes in the environment have made it extremely unlikely (and even if you get it some parts really bite). Bitmob itself was founded because Dan Hsu and Demian Linn were looking for something to do. Shoe and Linn! More gaming experience than Mario, more industry connections than a Borg assimilating E3, and for a while even they weren't paid for writing. You might want to rethink exactly how employable your "Top 10 Reasons Mario Hasn't Gotten Laid" essay makes you. (Also: that's been done.)
"Games writing" is two words, and as in any phrase the important part is the verb. For example: "Molesting a statue." You can change the noun to whatever you want but the sentence doesn't get any better. So write about anything and everything else you can: food and drink, politics, iPhone apps, eco-power, pets, knitting patters, anything. If you declare that you don't want to write about anything but games, what you're really saying is you want to play games and pretend that's work. It isn't. Insisting you'll only sully your precious fingertips when you land your precious gaming dream job? Would you let a surgeon start scalpelating your guts if he said "Finally, now that I'm working on a human I'll start making an effort"?
It's the part you do that matters, and when that part's writing you have to do it every day as much as you can to count as barely capable. As a beginner you can't limit yourself to a single style or subject, in the same way a virgin can't decide they'll only sleep with six foot red-heads (whichever gender): they should be happy with whatever they get, especially since the first time will be an embarrassing fumble.
The upside is that once you're no longer insisting on a single (almost imaginary) subject, you can start getting paid by the end of the month - guaranteed - while practicing for that same dream job. There are hundreds, thousands of sites out there who'll pay literally anyone who can even pretend to use English. They pay almost nothing, and almost is the key word because it isn't zero (a number you might recognize from your current game-writing income). My first daily gig was $3/post, and that wasn't a horrific rip-off - that was a free external trainer pushing a beginner to write every day, putting those samples on a professional-looking site, and every month my pay bought me two new games.
Within a month those samples got me a new job paying 700% as much. Two months later I'd doubled that, so on until I looked at my horrible day job and realized "I don't have to go there anymore." I now make 25% of my income from games writing, the other three-quarters coming from playing with toys, watching movies, and being sent free samples of liquor for "review." You may want to consider this approach.
http://www.zug.com/live/85693/The-iPhone-vs-Tin-Cans-Experiment.html#1054168291
It'll take a few dozen applications before you get anywhere (Freelancewritinggigs and Aboutfreelancewriting are great places to start, with Cracked forums offering insane publicity for beginner comedy writers). If that seems like too much trouble, give up right now, and consider yourself lucky you found this before before wasting your time even thinking about writing for
Lots of people want to write about video games, but playing 40 hours a week and finding all the Chaos Emeralds doesn't make you an ideal gaming writer -- it makes you an ideal gaming reader. The very existence of the sites (and the few giant panda-like magazines) you want to write for proves the existence of thousands of people with exactly the same qualifications.
If you just want to write about games, don't just write about games.
Aiming for a career in games journalism is like deciding to be a dinosaur rider -- it sounds awesome, but changes in the environment have made it extremely unlikely (and even if you get it, some parts really bite).
Bitmob itself was founded because Dan Hsu and Demian Linn were looking for something to do. Shoe and Linn! More experience than Mario, more industry connections than a Borg-assimilating E3, and for a while even they weren't paid for writing. You might want to rethink exactly how employable your "Top 10 Reasons Mario Hasn't Gotten Laid" essay makes you. (Also, that's been done.)
"Games writing" is two words, and as in any phrase the important part is the verb. For example: "molesting a statue." You can change the noun to whatever you want, but the sentence doesn't get any better. So write about anything and everything else you can: food and drink, politics, iPhone apps, eco-power, pets, knitting patterns, anything. If you declare that you don't want to write about anything but games, what you're really saying is you want to play games and pretend that's work.
It isn't.
So you'll only sully your fingertips when you land your precious gaming dream job? Would you let a surgeon start scalpelating your guts if he said, "Finally, now that I'm working on a human I'll start making an effort?"
It's the part you do that matters. And when that part is writing, you have to do it every day, as much as you can, to count as barely capable. As a beginner you can't limit yourself to a single style or subject, in the same way a virgin can't decide they'll only sleep with six-foot-tall redheads (whichever gender): they should be happy with whatever they get, especially since the first time will be an embarrassing fumble.
The upside is that once you're no longer insisting on a single (almost imaginary) subject, you can start getting paid by the end of the month -- guaranteed -- while practicing for that same dream job. There are hundreds, thousands of sites out there who'll pay literally anyone who can even pretend to use English. They pay almost nothing, and "almost" is the key word because it isn't zero (a number you might recognize from your current game-writing income). My first daily gig was $3 per post, and that wasn't a horrific rip-off -- that was a free external trainer pushing a beginner to write every day, putting those samples on a professional-looking site, and every month my pay bought me two new games.
[Editor's note: Bitmob now provides space for you to run your own Google Adsense ads at the bottom of each of your articles. So we'll help you make a little scratch too.]
Within a month those samples got me a new gig paying 700% as much. Two months later I'd doubled that, so on until I looked at my horrible day job, and realized, "I don't have to go there anymore." I now make 25% of my income from games writing, the other 3/4 coming from playing with toys, watching movies, and being sent free samples of liquor for "review."
It'll take a few dozen applications before you get anywhere (Freelancewritinggigs and Aboutfreelancewriting are great places to start, while Cracked offers truly insane publicity for beginner comedy writers).
If that seems like too much trouble, give up right now, and consider yourself lucky you found this before before wasting your time even thinking about writing for money.
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