First step into becoming a professional writer?

I started writing article for publication right from my schooling days in Nigeria. I often write for the school magazine or campus journal. I later graduated into writing articles on national issues in Nigeria. I send them to various newspapers houses in Nigeria. Most of my articles were published after going through necessary editing. I now write for online site such as triond and bukisa.thanks

I guess it is but best to choose the niche you are really interested in pursuing or a niche you have time you can devote with. You may enjoy writing novels but you may not have time for doing it. I enjoy writing short stories and I do have a lot of free time doing them. I am planning to turn them into an e-book and publish or sell them in the web. I hope I could earn money as well as prestige in doing so.

i just started by writing and finding websites that would take my writing. of course, this was several years ago before everyone thought they could be a writer and when the internet was a fairly new thing. i used to get a whole lot more money than the few peanuts you get now for writing.

My other half has written short stories since his early teens, and has now got onto a creative writing course to do a degree. He's doing really well in it too - distinction grades which means his tutors think his stuff is publishable. So i guess his next step will be to put together a portfolio and approach a few companies.

Writing is my hobby next to reading books. I started writing when I was a kid. I started to poems, short stories, and writing into my diary/journal. When I was in high school, that is the time I wrote stories that almost a novel I think. I wrote articles based on the books that I read and experiences. When I was in college, I had a subject that is purely writing for screenplay, TV scripts and news writing. My professor saw my talent and he taught me on how to check for plagiarism and he gave me tips on how to make it 100% original.