How I Became a Writer

This is the first of what I hope will become a series of posts by different members on how they broke into the world of professional writers. If you want to tell your story, or share advice, contact us at mwis dot tesol at gmail dot com. We’re open to posts of all formats, including video, audio, or presentations.

I took two roads to becoming a professional materials writer, and let me say from the beginning that I am by no means sustaining myself on writing ELT materials alone. I still do a lot of technical writing and even the occasional promotional writing to feed myself. So at the risk of falsely holding myself up as a paragon of success, I do think the two paths I took are illustrative of ways others have gone, but with slightly interesting twists.

A Niche Market

One road began when the school I worked at, a large company with many branches all over the world,  decided to rewrite its end-of-level tests. They hired a test-writing company to do the rewriting. The test company in turn decided they wanted teachers from the school to help write some of the items. I guess the director thought I was pretty good at writing tests, so I was nominated and accepted as a member of the test development committee, as it was called.

In turn, the test-writing company thought I did a good job writing items, so they continued to hire me for additional projects, and I still do work for them to this day. And that experience led me to apply for other test writing jobs, which again seems to add you to a stable of writers that the company calls on when they have new projects.

The takeaway is that if you can get into a specialized niche area of writing, there’s going to be consistent demand for you. Test-writing is one. As we learned in Baltimore, texts to train ITAs are another. Perhaps for you, the niche is a combination of factors: writing workbooks for young EFL learners? English for Russian-speaking businesspeople? Perhaps some readers can comment with areas they have chanced into that put them in demand.

A Contest

The second road, parallel to the test writing, was the contest road, which many have taken. Much like Lindsay Clandfield won the One Stop Lesson Share contest. There the comparison ends, but I bring it up to show that contests can get you a writing contract.That’s part of why publishing companies do them.

It was actually the BESIG/IAFTEL Business English lesson plan that brought me a wriitng contract, but indirectly. I was actually contacted by, Nick Robinson, who at the time was running an ELT agency.  Miraculously enough, within a few months, he offered me a gig with on the majors when the regular author dropped out. Since my wife had just given birth, and the deadline was very tight, I ended up saying no.

So about four months later, even more unbelievably, he offered me another gig with another of the majors, when again the regular author dropped out and they were pretty desperate to take anyone. It was a great first gig and a great learning experience. And that really set me on the path of trying to make a living at this writing thing.

There’s really two things to keep in mind here. Contests can definitely lead to a writing gig. And luck plays a huge role. I lucked into not one but two contracts the prestige (and compensation) for which I have never seen again. I also lucked into a time when there was an ELT agency. Nick has gone to greater things with ELTJam (and that has been a great source of work, as well) and I don’t think a similar agency exists now.

So that’s my story. I hope it’s interesting and useful and I especially hope others will follow in my footsteps and submit their own stories.

• Walton Burns