Unit 4, 3.2 "Create and justify a personal development plan" and 3.3, "Describe opportunites for training and development and explain the relevance of those choices."

Unit 4, 3.2 - "Create and justify a personal development plan" and 3.3, "Describe opportunites for training and development and explain the relevance of those choices."

It is everyone’s pipe dream – to be able to write for a living -, even people that don’t really have an interest in writing, there are some who have daydreamed about being a best selling author.

I don’t want that to be a pipe dream for me. I want it to be a reality. To be able to earn money from writing (doing something you love and making a living off) is, for anyone, the ultimate dream realised.

For this unit, I have been asked to ‘Create and justify a personal development plan’, and, really, there is nothing else I want to do but write.

So, in terms of creating a plan for myself when it comes to writing, I have got a couple of ideas of what I am going to do:

JOB EXPERIENCE

Everything relies on experience, really. When it comes to writing, not only is having your personal experiences good as you can write from a place you know, getting on-the-job experience is invaluable.

Shadowing over writers, and having experience working in an environment where everyone is writing, is, as I have just said, something that you really can’t buy.

Something I have been looking into is interning at magazines. Now, a lot of internships, as I have found, aren’t paid, but as I said – experience is invaluable. Meeting people who write and who have contacts in that industry would help anyone out in the long run. It’s not about what you know; it’s about who you know.


I have sent in queries to a number of art/fashion magazines including Lula, Dazed and Confused and iD, in hope that I would have the opportunity to intern at either magazine. I managed to get an interview with JUKE, who have, in turn, offered me the opportunity to intern with them when I get the spare time, something I am going to follow up come the new year. 

COURSES

Writing courses is something I have explored (and courses in general), but, what I have learnt over the years of doing many courses, is that while some of them can give you good and useful experience, others have the tendency of teaching you things you already know.

Still, it is a useful way to meet other budding writers and experienced, industry writers who can give you advice, too. 


Courses that I have found range from the BBC's Drama Academy (which is for those that have had at least an episode of something either on the radio/online/television broadcasted) to the Royal Court's Young Writers' Programme. 


COMPETITIONS


One thing that a lot of writers do, to help build their writing portfolio and add to their experience, is enter writing competitions. I myself have done the exact same thing, but, at the beginning of next year, I am definitely going to concentrate more on entering writing competitions, as it gave me a goal to aim towards and a deadline, too (which is something all freelancers will have to work against at some point in their life).


Writing competitions that I have discovered include the Writers-Magazine monthly competition and the Writers-Forum magazine, the latter being a place that I had a letter of mine published a few years ago. Both of these magazines also offer a cash prize if your work is selected for their upcoming issue. 

I also recently entered the Eastenders: E20 search for new writers for the next season of the online spin-off show of the BBC's flagship soap, Eastenders.

WRITE, WRITE, WRITE

You can’t be a writer without writing, it goes without saying.  People that have a remote interest in writing go about it in different ways. Some may write everyday, even if they don't like what they are writing. Others may only write when an idea pops into their head.

Either way, all writing is good writing. As long as you are putting pen-to-paper, or fingers-to-keyboard, then you are making progress.