Work for it.

I could stop there and most of you would understand what that really means, but for the sake of giving this piece a bit of meat I'll give you a little more insight. There are two schools of thought for writers, one is that writing is the hardest work you'll ever do, and the other is that writing is the easiest job on the planet. No one is right or wrong. Writing as a career has very little to do with the work involved, although there is considerable work involved if you want to make money doing it. What makes one person claim writing is hard and another claim writing is easy, is their attitude toward the 'work' part.

Not many of us would relish a 7AM dentist appointment, but make that same 7AM appointment a planned vacation, some time with a very old friend just passing through town, or a trip to an amusement park, and we'd not only be jumping out of bed to go, we'd have a hard time falling asleep from the excitement.

How many of us feel that way about the work that we do? Do you feel that way about writing? If you do, you'll do very well no matter where you decide to ply your trade. If you don't, you're in for a long line of 7AM appointments that will literally feel like pulling teeth.

Don't decide you want to work as an online writer, or any other kind of writer for that matter, because you want to make a lot of money or get rich quick. Writing is not a get rich quick kind of career – excepting the few rare individuals who get massive book and movie deals, and even then, that success you see is the result of possibly years of hard work in the trenches. For most of us, being a writer means that we'll work at our craft every day (hopefully with a smile), and get paid well enough to make a good living for ourselves or our family.

As a writer you will need to be passionate about writing, even if you're not always passionate about the topics you have to write about to put food on the table. You will have a tremendous amount of variety if you opt for online writing jobs over brick and mortar assignments, but you will still have to work hard in the beginning. You may move through this part quickly if you're willing and able to write a lot, or slowly depending upon your drive and motivation, but no one gets past go without taking their turn around the board.

Being passionate about writing means that you look forward to it, it's not a chore. There may be days when you can't think of anything to write, but you are unable to let even one day go by without writing something. We all love to write about topics that interest us, that's easy. Writing about topics that we may not find interesting, or that challenge us by broadening our perspective or knowledge, is a lot harder. And yet, to be a quality writer, you must be willing to delve into this part of the work. You must read everything you can, and that includes researching topics that you know nothing about, or that you've never cared to learn, in the interest of completing an assignment.

This can be when you feel like you're working harder than you should be, or that the money isn't worth it. I want to remind you in those moments, to ask yourself why you're doing it. Are you writing because you love to write, or are you writing because you need the money. It's okay to need the money, we all need some money to survive, but if that is your sole motivation for writing, you're in the wrong line of work and it's going to be an uphill climb the entire way to the bank.