Professional Writers: What They Know and What They Do

As a Professional Writing and Editing student, I've learned a lot about writing. Professional writers can perform a variety of tasks, such as writing, editing, researching, creating brochures and instruction manuals, talking with clients, and many other tasks. However, most writers follow the same principles. Many writers brainstorm and determine the purpose and audience before they begin writing. Another skill is the ability predict the audience's knowledge and to predict what information the audience seeks. Knowing correct grammar and spelling is helpful at this point, but evaluating and revising your own work is an important part of the writing process.

The two aspects of professional writing I most enjoy include editing and visual design. Editing is very audience specific since different documents need different types of editing. I enjoy pinpointing a problem to fix instead of taking on a daunting task. The visual design aspect breaks up the monotony of professional writing. With this task, I have the opportunity to focus on aspects other than topic sentences and punctuation.

I would like to learn more about how professional writers step out of their field. Do professional writers typically stay in one field or do they have the option of variety? If I don't have knowledge about a certain topic, for example engineering, how would I take a job that involved such a topic?