Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Finding Your Passion
So what do you want to be when you grow up? No, I mean really. Have you figured it out yet?
I have often envied those who find their calling very early in life. We have all met those few who seemed to have emerged from the womb knowing they are destined to be a musician or mathematician. I think it must be something genetic.
Most of us tend to fall into our careers by happenstance. Or we are pressured by family or society to conform to a certain norm of success and end up spending our lives "in quiet desperation" to quote the oft-quoted Thoreau.
Not for a minute do I have a solution for finding the "big" passions of your lives. But for those who are struggling a little with focus, maybe I can help steer you in the general direction of finding your professional passion. The fine tuning will be up to you.
Let me take a model I know best, that of the freelance writer. It's a model that applies to most freelance endeavours. I teach a professional readiness course as part of a two year non-fiction writing program at a local community college. In the early part of their studies, students are understandably unsure of what they want to be when they graduate. Some will go on to so-called regular 9-5 jobs in corporate communications. Others will write for magazines and newspapers. Still others will become technical writers. And so on.
Usually they will jump at the first job that comes along, rather than choosing the type of writing they really love. Which strikes me as a little strange. Why would you interrupt your life for a few years of study to follow your dream, and then at the last minute take on the type of assignments that give you a knot in your stomach, rather than a rush to your brain. Well, I know the short answer. Fear and money. But you know, perhaps with the exception of poetry and short fiction, making a good living and doing what you want to do are not mutually exclusive.
Too many writers artificially try to figure out a label for themselves - labels such as technical writer, or editor, or freelance writer - and then they try to make themselves fit the label. There is a better way.
First I would say to you, be a specialist rather than a generalist. In the 1980s, I made a reasonable living as an "all things to all people" writer. I wrote brochures, and press releases, and annual reports, and newsletters. I was a jack of all trades. But boy, my heart wasn't in it. I finally threw in the towel and went back to a "real" job, where my heart definitely wasn't. So when I decided to take a run at freelancing a decade ago, I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted to be.
I wanted to be a speech writer. I wanted to put words in other peoples' mouths. I wanted to write about every topic under the sun. And with my short term attention span, I wanted projects to be equally short term. In another life I might have been a script writer writing dialogue. In this life I am content to write monologue.
So one way out of the generalist box is to choose a genre (for want of a better word) of writing - like speech writing - or newsletter writing - or annual report writing - or brochure writing and offer that specialty across a wide spectrum of clients. You have to be careful about this approach. You have to really love the genre. I mean, I would rather shoot myself than specialize in writing brochures. But then, some people feel that way about writing speeches.
There is another way to approach the problem. Let's say you prefer to write in all sorts of genres, but you want to specialize, for example, in writing about biotechnology. So become the expert in that narrow field, but offer a broad spectrum of writing services.
Or you could specialize not in a topic, but in an industry. I have a colleague who has been specializing in the forestry sector for over a decade now, and does quite well thank you very much. Becoming the resident expert in an industry definitely marks you as the "go-to" person in the sector of your choice.
Three ways to find your niche. By genre. By interest. By industry. There are other ways to break down your interests of course. But you get the gist. So, think about it. What really does quicken your pulse? Then figure out a way to make it pay.
Finding and following your bliss doesn't have to be that hard. Just change your perspective a little and take another run at it. The route from your gut to your brain is through your heart.
