Quote Originally Posted by Meenstreek
I meant to ask this in my last post, but I was cut off. I'm at work and well you know how that goes.

I had a question for you birdgirl. I was wondering how you got your gig as a professional speechwriter?

Here at work I've done killer presentations and wrote a few things for the bigdogs to say at conventions, meetings, etc... I've always had fun, interesting, original speeches at school, but I never considered it a viable career option. I have a flair for words and I think I could do well writing speeches.

Also, what can a good speechwriter expect to get paid?
The way I got that gig--and the way most speechwriters do, too--is that I was working as a writer for that corporation. I started as a business writer and hated that because it actually involved tech writing, and I'm really more into creative/human-angle writing. So I worked my way into the marketing and PR area and did marketing copy/advertising writing for a number of years. That was the organization in which the executive speechwriters were, too, and they'd ask us to help with executive speeches when they got too busy. That morphed into an opening on the speechwriting team. And that's how I ended up in that job.

A lot of writers do freelance speechwriting or other types of freelance writing to build experience. If you can write an ad or a brochure, you can usually write a speech, too, or a video or audio script. Just so you know how to write in a conversational, succinct tone. The problem for freelancers is you need some way of finding people who need speeches to be written, and that's why working for a corporation works well. The execs and high-ranking managers often have public-speaking obligations. A good source of people who need speeches is often in local politics. That's frequently how political speechwriters get their starts. But they often come from the business world, too. One of my former colleagues from the corporation where I worked, which is a big Texas technology company, later got a job as a writer at the White House.

Salaries can vary, but freelance writers often charge more for speechwriting than other types of word-crafting, mostly because it's more visible, important writing. The experienced freelancers in our area charge $125/hour or more for executive speechwriting. Salaries for writers in corporations can vary anywhere from the low- to mid-40s for entry-level on up to more than$100,000 a year for experienced writers. I was lucky enough to be on the upper end of that scale before I went back to school. Political speechwriters who work for the government generally start in the mid-40s and don't go much higher than the mid-70s. (Private-sector jobs pay more.) But the top freelance political speechwriters can make a lot of money. The speechwriters who write for our president and his senior leaders tend to be staff writers rather than freelancers, however. They do that partially for security reasons but also to maintain exclusivity of phrasing/style.

If you're interested in being a speechwriter, read read read. Read famous speeches and books about famous speakers. Watch CSPAN and other channels that cover speakers and talkers. And get the book Simply Speaking by Peggy Noonan. She was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and is quite knowledgeable about speechwriting and communications (even if her political leanings are the complete opposite of mine).