How can I become a Writer?

If you enjoy writing and have good communication skills, you may like to read English literature across poetry, drama, classics, literary analysis and theory, development of Indian writing, and so on.

You can also take up creative writing, which spans all areas of non-journalistic and non-technical writing. This can be the stepping stone to many communication-based careers. One can become a journalist, a short story writer, a novelist, a playwright, a copywriter, or a scriptwriter. One can also find opportunities to write advertising or catalogue copy for a business or a corporation - the possibilities are endless.

There are hundreds of job sites on the internet for writers or journalists where you can pick up assignments. Another upcoming option for creative writers is to be a web content provider. Websites today require material to be interesting, fun and informative/ educational and are often looking for creative inputs.

You could also think about joining a publishing house as an editorial assistant/ copy editor who checks facts, references, spelling and probably even be required to rewrite portions of manuscripts, as well as to proofread. Some courses in creative writing are offered at institutions including:

• British Council, New Delhi www.britishcouncil.org

• Indira Gandhi National Open University www.ignou.ac.in

• Xavier Institute of Communication, St Xavier's College, Mumbai www.xaviercomm. org

• University of Delhi - add-on course offered in some colleges and are announced usually at the beginning of the academic year www.du.ac.in

• Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, New Delhi - diploma offered in collaboration with IGNOU, www.bvbdelhi.org

Mass communication covers all the areas of work where communicating with large numbers of people is required. While this includes both television and print media, other areas of mass communication are advertising, public relations and TV and film. Most mass communication courses cover all three areas, and allow you to specialise in the field of your choice. If you enjoy writing, you may like to explore working in advertising, specifically as a copywriter, or in public relations. Mass communication programmes are offered both at the undergraduate as well as at the postgraduate level. Students from any stream are eligible to apply.

The bachelor's programme in mass media and mass communication is offered by the University of Delhi only at IP College for Women and also at several colleges of Delhi's Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (ggsipu.nic.in).

The University of Mumbai, too, conducts degree programmes in mass communication in many colleges as do Amity School of Communication (www.amity.edu), Noida; Symbiosis Institute of Journalism and Communication (www.simc.edu), Pune, and Pioneer Media School (www.pioneermediaschool.com), New Delhi. For mass communication at the PG level, you can enrol for a bachelor's in any discipline - economics, political science, psychology, sociology are all useful subjects. The institutes offering PG programmes in mass communication include:

• Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi, www.jmi.nic.in

• Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi, www.iimc.nic.in

• Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan branches in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore, www.bvbdelhi.org

• Apeejay Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi, http://apeejay.edu/aimc/home.htm

Author: Usha Albuquerque (HT Horizons)

Date: 10th March, 2011

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