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Ask HN: Has anybody successfully changed their career to become a writer?
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Re: Ask HN: Has anybody successfully changed their career to become a writer?
#2I've seen people move to technical writing.
Re: Ask HN: Has anybody successfully changed their career to become a writer?
#3Andy Weir was a programmer when he wrote the martian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Weir
Re: Ask HN: Has anybody successfully changed their career to become a writer?
#4Re: Ask HN: Has anybody successfully changed their career to become a writer?
#5I went the other way. I was a writer, and now I'm a developer because having a family is expensive.
Re: Ask HN: Has anybody successfully changed their career to become a writer?
#6https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/so-you-want-be-writer
Yeah. I recently wrote a book and got most of it done within a few hours of morning + coffee sessions over a few weeks and one or two airplane rides. It made like $12K in its first year and it was really easy. Thinking this was an incredibly time-efficient way for me to earn money and contribute to society, I tried to write a sequel and have stalled.
The initial book just poured out of me. I had an outline, I knew exactly what I wanted to say and I just wrote the content. In that way it was like tackling a college paper or trello board, but instead, a few hundred pages of text.
Like I've said.. no other ideas have really coalesced into something outlineable and easy-to-market.. I have one manuscript that's 80 pages and sucks, another at 40+, etc etc. Reminds me of the hobbyist programmer population here with tons of unfinished projects.
I really had something to say and felt entitled to say it.
Re: Ask HN: Has anybody successfully changed their career to become a writer?
#7Andy Weir was a programmer when he wrote the martian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Weir
And he may have had more impact as a writer than as a programmer: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/achenblog/wp/2015/05/05/...
Re: Ask HN: Has anybody successfully changed their career to become a writer?
#8I wouldn't say I've changed my career to become a writer. However, I've shifted directions and have began writing a ton more as part of my career.
I'm in marketing, and before was focused quite a bit on social media content which was just quick little snippets accompanied with a photo. Now I write mainly long form content for blogs.
I focus on digital privacy and security at: https://choosetoencrypt.com/
If you like writing, you can incorporate it into many careers, without having to quit your job and be a starving artist.
Re: Ask HN: Has anybody successfully changed their career to become a writer?
#9Changed and changed back: I started as a programmer in Summer 1980; by 1994 I was tech writing, and then ghosting business books, and finally ghosting fiction. Seeing the low returns of even really good authors -- for one popular business book, I got $30K to ghost it, the author ended up making only $7K -- I decided to re-tool and learn Web languages. Now I'm a reasonably-well-paid Wiki administrator for a medium-size public medical software firm. I don't think it's one career, it's kinda surfing in place.
Re: Ask HN: Has anybody successfully changed their career to become a writer?
#10Ha! Well I’ve thought about it ... but first I really need to work out a sound and complete story calculus to make sure his damned thing is self consistent ... then , well the story arc needs to balistically perfect for which I’ll really need differentiable characters ... wait maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong ? Hang on let me google to see if someone’s come up with a story writing language.
:)