Two years ago, I quit a perfectly good editing job at BusinessWeek magazine to be a freelance writer. Why? To have more flexibility, to spend more time with my children, and to never, ever sit through a Friday staff meeting again.
This morning I dashed down my driveway to get the morning paper. I’m not usually this excited to read the daily paper, but today’s edition is especially thrilling for me because it contains my first paid article for a newspaper.
Like most of you, I carry around an “ideas notebook” to jot down story and article ideas as they occur to me. Some days I can fill pages with one line outlines of future articles to write. Other times, my notebook may remain untouched at the bottom of my bag for weeks on end. This […]
I was working for a handloom and yarn manufacturer, weaving, and writing promotional materials. I also did volunteer editorial work for a non-profit historic preservation group. One day I was under deadline, editing (heavily) a manuscript that a historian had been paid $40 an hour to write. The thought hit me — I was pushing the wrong pencil.
For more than a quarter of a century (yikes, that makes me sound old!) I’ve kept a small piece of paper I found on the floor of a motel restroom tacked to my writing room wall. These five words sum up how I’ve succeeded in supporting myself as a freelance writer:
I missed the phone call from my agent, but Lesley wrote down the information on a piece of paper and folded it into a ring box, the kind you hand a prospective fianc
Don’t most writing projects start out with a big idea? It could be something that came to you while you were stuck in traffic, doodled on a scrap of paper during a boring staff meeting, or penned on a coaster while waiting for friends at some trendy new club. If you are anything like me, your best ideas come to you when you’re not really trying to come up with anything brilliant…
As a child, I was always writing. I wrote lots of stories, and the summer I was eight, I put together several issues of a neighborhood newspaper, which my father copied at work so I could distribute it to the neighbors. I still have a battered copy of one of the issues.
I can still see it. A small plastic poinsettia in faded red with three tiny lights and six dull green leaves. It was such a cheap piece of junk it screamed against making anything out of plastic, ever. Still, it was a symbol of Christmas, and all I had to work with, so I put […]
I was one of those lucky few who was actually at the right place at the right time.
