Forcing your artistic prowess is impossible, it never happens. Whoever tells you otherwise, is just lying.
My Brief Journey Into Professional Writing
If I have to explain why, let me share my experience of turning passion into a profession.
As soon as I finished my Masters in English I rushed myself into things.
Thinking of turning my passion for writing thoughtful expressions to meet an appropriate channel with little knowledge of the number of channels available for it.
Content writing is the first term that comes to mind whenever one thinks of turning writing as a passion into a profession.
But, wait! Just right there!
Do you even know the diversity of content available on the internet?
You can't just jump on writing anything. For writing you must have a niche of your choice.
But unfortunately, like you, I had no idea of this, back in my impressionable days.
Thus, without thinking much I just started applying for content writing jobs on various job applying platforms.
A little heads-up wouldn't hurt that a life-capsizing event happened during the same period. My father's untimely death. I won't explain it any further because it will take an eternity for me to explain how much it affected me and my mental health and how much he mattered to me.
Moving on to the writing position I got.
Well, on my first application I got shortlisted for the content associate position at a company of moderate repute. After a total of two assessments I finally got selected for the orientation training, a thing I had no clue about.
Nevertheless, I joined virtually, and there she was, our team lead, with that condescending smirk and insolent eyes, waiting to take me aboard.
Without knowing anything I just went along.
Soon after joining the meeting I saw my fellow peers, waiting, for others to join the orientation training so that our TL could commence her reign of dictatorship without having to repeat herself to every individual trainee who joins later.
I saw many names of the other trainees on my screen but except for one name I could not recall a single name, now that I'm documenting my experience.
Here, a little heads up wouldn't hurt that all this happened during the Covid 19 pandemic, and doing a job was strictly based on working from home (WFH). Thus, providing you a little to no knowledge about office culture or how to work with the team. This is especially a bit more exclusive for me who is restricted socially.
Nevertheless, the orientation training commenced and I had sporadic intervention in joining the meeting due to a poor wifi connection.
So, whatever I heard about our duties and responsibilities from the tyrant TL was half-heard and the worst thing was that she would not repeat herself even if you die asking. And if you approach her for a recap she would forward you to one of the other associates to clear your doubts.
Somehow I managed to know about what my work entails and finally, that was for the day.
The same day we were asked to submit our documents and bank details for the payment of our work and the same day our login credentials to the company were also created and shared with us.
The very next day we were added to this WhatsApp group in which work could be disseminated to us. It was all exciting. I was eager to put my writing talent to use. I wanted to see how versatile I could get. However what came in front of me was far more disappointing than shocking.
The Eye-Opening Reality Of Content Writing
As content associates, we were assigned the duties of writing various college profiles by enumerating all the infrastructure, facilities, courses curriculum, and extracurricular activities the college has to offer.
And we have to do this daily. Day in and day out.
Assigned to an assignment, start writing by taking authentic facts from their college websites, writing and editing, then submitting within the word count and with all SEO guidelines properly adhered to at the end of the day.
Oh yes! I forgot to mention the plagiarism should be zero and the grammarly score should not be anything less than 95.
Does it even sound interesting?
No, it doesn't.
It rather sounds tedious.
If you have any knowledge of the best practices of SEO, you'd know that it is tricky and takes a bit of time too with huge word counts.
But we were asked to write within 1275 worded SEO-friendly articles without plagiarism, a Grammarly score not less than 95 and of course turning all the lights green in Yoast Plugin.
What they were asking at the price of a junior content writer is the work of an experienced SEO content writer.
Frankly, I would have easily accepted that as well but it has nothing to contribute to your artistic prowess.
Every day a total of two assignments would have been assigned and a total of two days would be given to complete them with all the necessary guidelines maintained.
The Breaking Point
Every time I would start my work I would be haunted by the word limit, the template, and the limited information on the college websites.
At times the team leader would even assign us with a college profile who would not even have an official website of their own.
Think about that situation when nothing about the college is available on the internet and you have a college profile to make based on the template and authentic facts and with a massive word count of 1275.
It's nerve wrecking.
And that's exactly what happened one day with me.
That one "un-fine" day our TL assigned me with two colleges with little to no information available on the internet about them.
She would specifically call it a challenge and you have to overcome it to prove how conniving of a writer you are.
The minute I started brainstorming about the colleges is exactly the minute I thought of quitting on those.
And that's what I did.
I have quit on those and informed about it on our WhatsApp group and that's the moment I presented myself to be the object of animosity of my TL.
Then my TL deliberately ignored my request to be assigned with a new assignment and made sure everyone in the group to notice.
After a day or two, to my utter surprise, I was terminated from my position. The only good thing was the experience certificate which they later mailed me.
Final Thoughts
This job was supposed to nurture my passion for writing, but instead, it drained it.
Writing has always been my safe heaven, my way from escaping the harshness of life, but now it had become rather a burden.
The joy of crafting words was lost in the endless demand for SEO optimization, word counts, and rigid templates.
The harsh truth? Not all passions are meant to be professions.
When creativity is forced, it loses its essence. And when writing becomes just another corporate task, it strips away everything that made it beautiful in the first place.
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