Writers: Are You Wearing Enough Hats?

As a person, I wear many hats. As a writer, I'm starting to try more of them on for size and it's great. It mixes things up a bit and it's helping me grow as a writer plus I'm getting to help people that have helped me in the past.

Lately I can wear a writer hat, a manager or editor hat, an affiliate marketer's hat and the hat of a consultant. It's working out well and as a one-woman show, I need to also wear hats I'm not crazy about so I can sometimes act as collection agent, secretary and kick myself in the butt and be a drill sergeant too.

It's pretty interesting how things have changed since I first got started as a writer. Because I was such a sponge looking to soak up everything I could, I gathered a lot of knowledge from many places. Today, that's paying off because I'm getting to pay it forward and benefit from the way I've conducted my career. I'm now consulting to one of my first clients who taught me a lot in my early days and have been able to help a mentor get back on their feet by helping them find work after some unfortunate setbacks.

Because I decided to focus on getting knowledge in specific areas such as search engine optimisation and social media, I am now in a position to mentor some of my early mentors. It's wonderful to be able to give back to some of those who helped me get my start and I am also the type who believes in paying it forward so I'm doing some mentoring of my own.

-I have a mentor who has recently started taking work from me.
-I also have a new seo client who used to teach me about writing effective keyword articles now using me for helping them increase their search engine rankings.
-I have been mentoring new writers on how to start a writing career.
-I'm consulting to a new client on helping him to launch his business.

In my previous life in a professional consultant position, I consulted people every day and loved helping people solve their business problems. Today, I'm wearing the hat of writer but because of my choices, I haven't had to put the consultant persona away and I'm loving it. Not only do I get to continually work at mastering my writing skills but I'm also putting old skills that made me feel fulfilled to good use.

I have a friend who's a lawyer and she decided not to practice law any longer. She wanted to pursue freelance writing. Today, she's carving out a niche in legal writing. It won't be long before she's earning as much or more than I am. If you've got specific knowledge or skills, you can find a way to capitalise on those skills so that you can use them in your writing career for creating a niche or specialising in something very unique that sets you apart from other writers.

The purpose of today's post is to tell you that if you're getting into writing or even if you're now a seasoned writing professional, there's no reason why you can't do more than be a writer. It's very fulfilling to pay it forward and it's great to use my old skills as complimentary to my newly acquired skills. Continually learning and growing your skills is, in my opinion, the best way to continuously get job satisfaction.