So you want to be a writer? Advice from Football Outsiders’ Rivers McCown

Football Outsiders writer Rivers McCown confessed this week that the top mailbag question the site gets isn’t about its innovative analysis of the NFL, it’s some variation of “How can I become a football writer?”

So McCown spent almost 4,000 words dispensing advice on that very subject. It’s a lot of good advice, too, and it won’t be useful only to those who want to write about football. I won’t be able to give more than just a quick taste here—4,000 words is 10 times as long as this blog post—but I’ll sum up McCown’s advice this way:

• Write a lot. Don’t worry too much about details or presentation at first. Just write a lot.

• Read a lot. Study the writers you admire and figure out why what they do works.

• Learn about companies you want to work for. Don’t just spray applications and résumés around. You’re selling something. Understand your markets.

• Be willing to put in some work, unpaid if necessary.

• Look for new places where you can write—McCown states this as looking for places where you can guest-post.

• Be kind. Create and nurture good relationships. Praise writers you like. Network.

Go read the whole thing. As you can tell from the links above, it contains a lot of advice that’s been dispensed around here. There just might be something to it.