In 1998 I became temporarily disabled, and was forced to leave my full-time job of ten years’ duration. As I regained my strength, I decided to see if I could cobble enough together with writing and teaching jobs to support myself. The first thing I had to do was overcome my personal aversion to “networking.”

I gathered my business cards, collected over a lifetime, and started calling contacts. This resulted in an offer to teach a career course at Mercy College for a month so the real teacher could tend to a family emergency.

Then, I summoned the nerve to call my sister-in-law’s sister’s boyfriend to find out to whom at the New York Post I could pitch my services. I wrote the best pitch I could, noting my years of freelance writing on business and careers for Wall Street Journal publications. My letter was passed from person to person until, months later, out of the blue, I was contacted. The Post wanted to know if I would write a weekly career column!

And so I did for the next two years until…

One week, I published an article that was funny and flippant – well written, I guess you’d call it. To my amazement, I received a call asking me if I was interested in authoring a book on careers for the publishing arm of Barnes & Noble. Was I?!

In four months’ time, I wrote and delivered I Need a Job, Now What? The book went on to a second printing as Getting a Job, and was also produced on audiotape. I walked into bookstores and there was a display of my book. What a thrill! Did I mention I got a nice bit of change for the book too?!

Janet Garber is a freelance journalist living on the outskirts of New York City. She has published articles, reviews, essays, and one non-fiction book. She is currently working on poems, short stories, and a novel as well. Her work has appeared in the following newspapers and magazines: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New York Post, National Business Employment Weekly, Managing Your Career, Journal of Career Planning and Employment, Diversity, Workforce, Jewish Week, Working Mother, Neworld Review, Inreads, Festival of Films, Senior Film Files, StageandCinema, Women’s News, The Journal News. My fiction and poetry have appeared in Bohemia Journal, Caesura, CommonTies, Contraposition Magazine, Frisky Geezer, Hazard Cat, Heyday Magazine, Minerva Rising, On Velvet Feet Anthology, SimplyCharly, Up, Do Anthology, Viral Cat, When Women Waken, WritingTomorrow.