Charlotte Chadwick

Throughout my university career I soon learned to expect that, whenever I told someone I’d decided to major in English, I would be met with a face that fell into a dubious expression and the following question: ‘Huh... Okay... So you want to be a teacher?’

I did not want to be a teacher. I wanted to be a writer. And, despite all the eye rolls that were unceremoniously thrown my way over this desire, I’ve finally achieved that goal.

I guess what I’m here to say to all the writers out there with something to express is, the responses get better. And, despite what you’re told, writing for a living doesn’t have to be a pipedream. ‘Better’ begins (at least it did in my case) with my first real job out of uni – the job that I currently have. I was hired as Junior Editor for LeadGeneratorsDigital, a London-based digital marketing agency whose clients are mostly in the travel business.

‘Junior Editor? Wait a minute, you just told us you were a writer!’

Not only are you observant, you’re also correct – I’m both. As a member of the content team, I’m lucky enough to spend the majority of my day writing about anything from topics close to my heart to things I knew nothing about before I began researching them for a piece (I don’t know a thing about car hire excess insurance or shuttle transfers, nor did I know how to golf in Portugal). There’s so much diversity and versatility in what I’m assigned to write about that there’s never a dull moment.

If you heard someone say, ‘What do you call a travel writer with pieces about going on Canadian holidays, escorted tours, staying in a Menorca villa, and hiring a catered ski chalet without ever having left England?’, wouldn’t you think that was the beginning of a joke? And, as humorous and downright strange as that might sound, what I do for a living is wonderfully creative and unique, two career musts for me. I mean, I get to travel through my research and fulfil my life’s passion through my writing – not too bad for an English major, I’d say.