The scourge of writing for a living (for non-journalist/authors)

I'm delighted to say that after a few years of working in a job that had me writing one 16,000 world report each month it's coming to an end :)

Anyone else out there do a lot of writing for a living and realise it's awful?

I'm not talking about journalists or authors. I'm really talking about writing reports for  businesses, or writing one for a particular industry or sector.

Here are some of the reasons it's terrible;

- With a 16,000 word report (my longest one was 25,000), the planning, research, writing, re-reading/writing, editing/making manager's changes is extremely long and arduous. And you've got a just month to do it (plus all your other day-to-day tasks).
- Nobody reads your full 60+ page report, so a lot of your work is simply a waste of time. I blame this on the company - quite an old one, with an archaic way of operating compared to its newer competitors. 

On top of this I did a lot of admin, client meets/presentations which I didn't really mind too much. 

Writing was the worst though - it drains you. I also found that when I went to look for another job, some of my other technical skills were really underdeveloped, as the writing took up so much time. I had to work in my own time to get up to speed. 

Maybe it was just the company I worked for (quite an old one as mentioned), but beware of writing jobs!! Anyone else have this experience?