Writing something substantial and posting it online would help your chances. I was offered a job as a technical writer partly on that basis. I agree with the other comment that software development is preferable for the money, but on the other hand it's easier to switch off from technical writing at the end of the day or do your own projects after work than it would be if you were programming all day.

While I'm at it, being a technical writer convinced me that software engineering and technical writing shouldn't be separate roles, because a lot of my time spent asking for clarification about things led to software engineers realizing they shouldn't have done it that way in the first place, and then changing it. If they had to write about it themselves, the feedback loop would have been tighter. Making them separate roles and paying technical writers less money probably started as some business guy's idea of division of labor.