Dear Students of Detroit's Malcolm X Academy: The Future is in Writing Well

It’s true. The future—specifically your future—will be greatly served by reaching a reasonable level of competency when it comes to communicating by using written language.

And, yes, this is particularly true for those of you who will go on to higher education (of which, statistically, quite a few of you do, as I understand it).

And (and this is the BIG and), if you get really good at this writing stuff, you can become just like me.

I’m a pro. A professional writer, that is. I am that “go to” guy who is affectionately referred to as “the writing guy.” Others call me a media guru. My students at Spring Arbor University (besides addressing me as Professor McTyre or Dr. McTyre) know me most commonly as the writing specialist. For them, I am the instructor of a mandatory research writing course that all undergraduates must take early in their program. And for graduate students, I am an instructor of business communication and grant writing classes.

When one is a professional writer, it is a natural career evolution to, at some point, begin teaching what one has been gifted to do. I have been teaching writing at the academic level for the past nine years. During this time, I have been involved in a number of projects that include authoring a weekly column for the Southfield Eccentric newspaper and writing several grants for non-profit organizations. I am a book editor for a local publishing company and, presently, I am completing a major book project myself; it is on the topic of the leadership crisis that is present in the state of Michigan. It is my third book.

But let me step back for a second.

This posting to my blog is not about me; it is about you, and how as many of you who are so inclined, may, yourself become a professional writer.

First off, you do have to like writing. No, that is not the best word….Passion, that’s it. You must be passionate about writing and you must be perpetually curious about, and unafraid of, words and their meaning and their potential to be what we think and believe. Words have life and must be cared for. And I need to mention (just in case some of you don’t believe yourself to be passionate about writing, or don’t have much of a care about words) that if you love to recite the lyrics of songs, you have a love for words. More specifically, you have a love for how the words are arranged. Songwriting of any form is as much a part of the professional writing genre as is grant writing, newspaper writing, or blogging.

Now, once the passion thing becomes a real and defining experience in your life, the next thing needed is to write like there is no tomorrow—literally. Write in journal form, make up stories, and use your school assignments as self-teaching opportunities to work on improving your writing. And while you are writing, be sure that you read—widely and often. Become an eclectic reader.

I will let you search out the definition of that word.

Suffice it to say that a good blending of writing and reading becoming a habit in one’s life will bode well for learning to write well. The idea here is to expose you to as many opportunities as possible to practice the craft of writing and to think about what has been written.

And while you are doing all of this, don’t forget to get a college degree or two. To be successful as a professional, a writer must become a disciplined thinker. Higher education will do that for you. It will also create opportunities—via internships and networking—to get real writing jobs (in public relations, the news media) where you can gain practical experience.

Oh, by the way. Lawyers are writers too. In fact, lawyers are among those in the genre of professional writers. Plus, lawyers have the critical thinking thing down to a science; you don’t get in to law school without displaying competency in this area.

Oh, and doctors are also writers. Many of them regularly publish important research papers and write books about topics relative to their field of expertise.

Oh, and fire fighters and police officers and nurses and….

You get the picture.

Professional writers can be individuals such as me who make being a wordsmith my primary occupation. Other pros do it as a supplement to a non-writing career. I began my work life as an emergency medical technician. While I did that work I began writing on a freelance basis, selling articles to local newspapers and magazines. This led me to journalism, and then from there, to other opportunities in business and government—all of them writing related.

So, the choice is yours….And you’ve got plenty of them. But first, work on that passion thing!