Association

We would like to thank the various writers for allowing The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors, Inc. to reproduce their stories in this venue and affirm that all rights beyond this usage belong to the authors. Every writer has a unique beginning and we hope that this collection will provide insight and food for thought for others on the path or just starting the journey. Thank you all very much. –TRHA

by Shelly Heskett Harris

Shelly Heskett Harris

I am never more than an arm’s length from a pen. As a child my first writing was a news piece and later I won writing awards in school. For forty years, I made my living working for small daily and weekly newspapers. Now, at 76 years I have just published my first novel. So I am an author.

I write in book margins, on scraps of paper, restaurant napkins, clean white 8 x 11 sheets, and in notebooks of all sizes. I love words. No matter what I am doing, they are in the back of my head bouncing around and stringing together. It’s the words and their demand to break free that rules my life.. Actually, I’m a worder.

The first one to capture my imagination was the F-word. You see, hardened newspaper woman, fiction writer and I still can’t link the four letters together in print. I was six. I had no idea what it meant, but it was powerful. The mere mention would rate an uncomfortable lecture from my mother. Written on the sidewalk at school it would bring the principal down from his lofty office and cause much hemming and hawing among the teachers.

I would leave early for my piano lesson because on the side of the building next to the alley, that word was scrawled across the bricks in huge chalk white letters. I would stand and stare at it. One afternoon I touched it. How daring I was.

My friend, Susan, came for her lesson right after I did. She would be waiting in the alley and we’d share the danger of looking when any moment someone might walk by.  We were adventurous, and brave enough to write the word on a piece of paper. Captured!. Suddenly, we were in control and dizzy with excitement. But now, what to do? Susan had a small coin purse. We carefully placed the scrap of paper in the purse and buried it in the back yard of a vacant house on our street. Sometimes we would dig it up, look  and then bury it again.

The purse may still be there. She and I tried to find it once, when we were in Jr high school and considered ourselves budding authors. We dug in several places but found nothing. We had more important business. It was the 1940’s and we were dealing with war words strung together to make headlines. It was a time of awesome images…time of the written word. And in some capacity made writers of us all.

by Geoff Paxton

I never set out specifically to be a writer. I was dreadful at school essays. Every school report I ever got said, “He could do better”.
I wanted to be a doctor, and started to study medicine, and failed at it. So I went to work for an Afrikaans newspaper as a press photographer, a hobby till then. I barely spoke Afrikaans when I started, and certainly could not write in it. After a couple of years I moved to an English-language daily paper.
After another couple of years I became a freelance photojournalist (and commercial photographer). Suddenly, just taking pictures was not enough, I had to write the words as well, at a reasonably competent level. I did quite well at that.
I then moved into IT, and quickly was having to write specifications for systems. I became systems development manager at a company, and suddenly had to write a heavy motivational document to the board of directors.
I then was ordained an Anglican priest. I had to write sermons, although quickly learned to preach without notes, as communication is more effective.
Back in IT, as a consultant, we were running vision-planning and strategic workshops for companies, and my writing skills were polished further.
I have written several books. Wealth be my Friend has been published. Other are eBooks.
So now I am pretty well full-time employed as a writer.

by Harry Husted

My first chance with writing occurred when I was about eight years old. I wrote a poem in honor of my mother. She loved it. After reading the short poem, she claimed I had a gift of using words. So I began the journey of learning all about the English language. I read countless self-help books and novels. My favorite novelist was Stephen King. I read much of his stuff growing up (actually got introduced to his writing when I was about 18).

During high school I was on the school newspaper as Editor-in-Chief. After graduating high school, I worked as a stringer for my local newspaper part time. I loved writing. During those days, I wrote short stories. Soon I began to write non-fiction pieces.

A number of people loved my work and hired me to write books for them. I was actually a ghostwriter. Right around 1994, I started a company to showcase my writing. I originally called it Write For Media, but in 2004, or somewhere thereabouts, I changed the name to Creating Words and that is the name I stuck with.

Today, I specialize in writing books, e-books, and sales letters. At least this is the type of work I am getting the most of.

by Marie Pinschmidt

I spent most of my life as an oil painter. I started writing when I was in my late 60’s and have three novels published. Now I paint and write and can’t honestly say which I enjoy most.

by Aaron Van Gossen

I first started writing short stories when I was around 8 or 9. I wrote a series of adventure stories starring a young boy and his invisible dragon. I was a big fan of the Pete’s Dragon story. In the 8th grade I wrote a science fiction short story titled “Spies From Space” and entered it in the Wyoming Young Authors Competition. It won first place in the science fiction division. So I guess I’ve always been a writer. Always been coming with stories in my head.

by Dave Macks

Sorry folks, I never dreamed I would write. I love to read and come from a family of readers, but writing? I was taught that you had to hold a 9-5 job and be responsible and writing didn’t fit that mold.
I was frustrated by some of the teen fiction that I saw and thought I could do that. After several years of complaining my wife finally told me to do it. After three years and many rewrites I had a manuscript and didn’t know what to do with it. I tried several traditional publishers and was turned down. I went back in and did another rewrite thinking it must be the book. I gave out printed copies of the manuscript to a number of teens and got positive feedback. I became a subscriber to WritersWeekly and found all the things I was doing wrong, okay maybe not all, but it was a big number. I took a couple of writing classes and went back and polished the work one more time. I submitted to a POD publisher that seemed to at least do some evaluation before accepting the work and was accepted. My first book “A Boy out of Time” came out last year. Book two will be out this spring with hopes of book 3 sometime in late fall.

I am shocked at what I have done and would never have guessed that I would one day be a writer.

by Anna Martin

I have loved to read since 1st grade, however, I hated grammar in school. During college there were hundreds of term papers to write. I loved doing the research but didn’t much like putting it on paper, but I did – hundreds of times.

In my last paying job I published newsletters and my boss said I was a good writer. That boosted my ego and I took a Creative Writing course at the local community college. The instructor wasn’t bowled over with my writing, but he did publish some of it in the college writing annual. Later I wrote four articles and sent them out to national magazines.  To my surprise, one of them was purchased and published.
More recently, while with the Peace Corps in Ukraine, my teacher colleagues really liked my writing.  They asked me to write essays about my life and they put activities for students with the stories. The book was published in Ukraine and is now used for teacher training in the universities there.

So guess I really am a writer. (But I still can’t spell.)

by Molly Walapola

Born the youngest of a very large family, with the gap of 7 years between my sibling just before me and myself, I had to entertain myself. I realized at a very early age thatI had a knack for story telling as characters would build in my head.

I first became published at about age 10 when one of my teachers picked up a story I had written and sent it to the Children’s section of the largest local newspaper. Seeing my name in print was exhilarating. I knew then I wanted to see my name sprawled across publications.

Throughout school, my essays would be picked to be read aloud by the teacher as well as my classmates. I also have the distinction of being the only student to get an A in a poetry workshop taught by Ron Koertge, the NEA winner that year.

Economic necessities forced me to pursue a career in marketing, but my writing skills were always the talent that kept getting me recognition.
I am still keeping my dream alive of getting published – I have several stories in the works about characters of Sri Lankan background placed in western locales.

http://mollywalpola.wordpress.com is a starting point
http://mollywalpola.blogspot.com is a commentary of my musings

by L. J. Taylor

I started writing at an early age.  At the age of 13, I began writing a science fiction novel that was inspired by Star Wars.  In high school, I wrote poetry and song lyrics.  One of my poems was published in my high school yearbook.

Despite the fact that I began writing at an early age, I really discovered that I was a writer in 2007 when, after years of stifling my creativity and being miserable, I wrote an erotic poem.  Even though I had never written an erotic poem before, it was the best poem I had ever written.  A few of the lines just came to me while I was in the shower.  I dried off, threw on a robe, sat at my computer, typed the lines that were in my head and created the rest of the poem around them.  When I had finished, I just sat there staring at the computer in astonishment.  I realized then that I had to write or I would never be happy or complete.  That’s when I knew I was a writer.

For the full story and samples of my work, visit my blog at http://ljtaylorbooks.wordpress.com

by Harnoor Channi-Tiwary

I would have to admit that it was a case of striking off what I am NOT born to do in my case to reach what I am born to do. After my MBA, I started off in my marketing job, one which many would envy. Yet, it did not take me long to realize that I wasn’t born to do that, my purpose in life was to write. I have since regularly written, almost fanatically at times. Some work had the privilege of being published, the rest I share with the world on my blog. There’s a poem I read that I completely relate to called So You Want To Be A Writer – Charles Bukowski. Here is it, albeit a little long:

If it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it.
Unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut,
don’t do it.
If you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your typewriter searching for words,
don’t do it.
If you’re doing it for money or fame,
don’t do it.
If you’re doing it because you want women in your bed,
don’t do it.
If you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
If it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
If you’re trying to write like somebody else,
forget about it.
If you have to wait for it to roar out of you,
then wait patiently.
If it never does roar out of you, do something else.

If you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

Don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and pretentious, don’t be consumed with self- love.
The libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to sleep over your kind.
Don’t add to that.
Don’t do it.
Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
Unless the sun inside you is burning your gut,
don’t do it.

When it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
There is no other way.

And there never was
—————
To answer your question – I write because I just cant imagine not doing so.

by Nadine M. Riggs

I have been writing God inspired poetry since the age of ten, I had them built up in a file folder, and on floppy discs, but at the age of 35 I still had not attempted to publish anything.  My husband, and children finally talked me into attempting, and from day one all my poetry was accepted.  I even received the Who’s Who in poetry in 2004 but I was getting nowhere, and was just about to give up when God inspired me to write a book.  I was sitting at the bedside of a sick friend every night while she was in a Rehab center she was 94 and needed assistance at nigh to keep her safe.  God began to inspire me around the second night, and around 2 1/2 wks later I had my first book, called “The Judgement Line it is taking time but sales are slowly going up.  I also write for Helium.com, and Associated Content.com, the money is coming in slowly but I hope to eventually build up a following.  I have no difficulty building up a readership, but I am not sure the page views are being counted like they should on Associated.  If you want to read, and comment on Christian writing check out my profiles, and book website @ http://thejudgementline.weebly.com/
http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/679994/nadine_m_riggs.html
http://www.helium.com/users/549529

by H. Beulah Ben’Adam

I won, oops, sorry came second in a Caribbean wide poetry competition when I was 11/12. I have always loved writing and drawing and dancing and singing, in other words anything creative and to do with performing. I am not a ’show off’ though and somewhat paradoxically or unusual to most theories I do not crave the limelight or attention. In fact I tend to like to be on my own quite a lot and with only a handful of people as close friends when I am not like clubbing or some general social thing.

My writing, plays-one currently for airing on community radio and staging, is grounded in life and the beauty there is in it. Not romance or necessarily romantic notions as these are not particularly helpful even if often useful. No I write on real life as a Social Scientist but as a lover of Art and therefore of beauty.

I have written and performed poetry, songs and such but always with a social application and almost never for mere ‘entertainment’.

by Maura Stone

When I was a teen-ager I wrote pornographic poems disguised as literature. You know the type of poems: those that had phrases like “intense pleasure” or “sudden explosions” or “hot seas of molten fluid.” They were published for three years in my high school magazine and had quite a following.

That’s when I knew I was a writer.

As an adult, I wrote financial analyses which were thinly disguised, but oh so eloquently written, pornography. I got away with it for several years until the time when senior management made a presentation to the Board of Directors. While reading aloud my review of a company, one of the top managers along with the other stuffed shirts around the massive conference table incrementally became aware of the double meanings. How I wish I were a fly on the wall for that meeting! Rumor has it that the temperature of that room rose by quite a few degrees. What I could never understand was how my allusions eluded these people for years. One thing for certain: I was placed on probation.

That’s when I totally knew I was a writer.

During revisions of my novel, “Five-Star FLEECING,” I informed my editor that I wanted to keep certain sex scenes in my book. Actually, what I said to him on the phone was, “I don’t care, I want those fellatio scenes! They’re classics!” He serenely responded, “If you can fit them in, no problem.”

Well, it didn’t come to pass. Instead, I wrote a wildly comical novel (sadly, sans sex) that was deemed “Superb Scathing Satire.” 

So now I’ve come to terms that I am not a pornographic writer. Simply a comedic one

“Five-Star FLEECING” at www.maurastone.com 
Sold on all major internet booksellers

by Donna Carrick

by Laurie Clayton

I was a geeky kid, but my Grade 6 teacher loved my short stories. At last! Something that was mine! I’ve been writing ever since. Some early success in screenwriting followed by work at CBC, and now, genre novels and whatever TV scripts I can get my hands on. This past summer I spoke on a panel called, ‘Success Stories’ at Humber College (I completed their correspondence course with D.M.Thomas) and I just started teaching writing, as well. So I guess I’m the real thing. My experience has been that if you want it badly enough and you stay the course, it will happen.

by Conrad Steenkamp

by Steve Sawyer

This is a short version. I could expand it with some of my writing experiences, like the time two druggies threatened to kill me in the middle of our newsroom in Selma, or the time somebody fired shots at our editor through the newsroom window, or the obituary I wrote for Wilson Baker, the sheriff who made national headlines when he and his tobacco-chewing deputies supervised the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights march.  But those stories are for another day.

by Erin Lenhardt

I’ve been attracted to words since before I knew what they meant. Apparently, at the age of three, I took it upon myself to type up one of my favorite books (something about an apple tree) on my parents’ computer. Matched the letters on the keyboard to the letters in the book. Since then I’ve always written things down… in a journal, poems, stories, essays… it’s my way of dealing with and processing life. I started my first novel in sixth grade. After writing my senior thesis on Flannery O’Connor, there has been no doubt in my mind that what I like to do most of all is write.

I think the biggest clue that I’m a writer at heart, besides my attraction to words and my habit of picking up the pen, is a somewhat dangerous aspect of my personality that I’ve been aware of since forever: I want to know about and experience everything. To write about it, you have to know something of it (or so I’ve always thought). Anyway, I’m not as brave as the rest of you: I only write on the side.

Journey to a Dream

by Cheryl Wright

My parents were voracious readers. So at about 7 years of age and surrounded by books, I dreamed of being a writer. I imagined a book about my life and with my face on the cover.My parents’ expectations led me down a different road but eventually, God guided me right back to my childhood dream. While passionately working as a decorating consultant, I was inspired to write about related topics. I approached the publisher of a woman’s magazine and one month later my column, Home Decor with Cheryl Wright, debuted and ran for eight years until the magazine folded. During that time my decorating articles were also published online.

Two years into that first writing adventure, I had an epiphany – I was writing. I was on the cusp of fulfilling my childhood dream.

I didn’t waste any time, but enrolled for a writing course and hit the road running. More accurately, I hit the road writing.

I discovered my voice, developed my style and unearthed my passion for writing.

The book about my life has not yet materialized but my essays, feature articles and columns about life and its issues, which are common to us as human beings, have been published both online and in print since 2002.Since 2006 I have been writing a weekly column, Wright Words of Wisdom, which is featured in the Womanwise Magazine – a Sunday pullout magazine in the Trinidad Guardian newspaper.

I maintain a blog through which, I enjoy the most amazing friendships with like-minded writers, kindred souls, pursuing and living their writing dreams as passionately as I am.

NATURE VERSUS NURTURE – A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS?

NATURE – TAKE ONE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT

by Mel Menzies

I can’t say that I always wanted to be a writer, simply because the thought never occurred to me. What I can say is that from the time I could hold a pen, I’ve always written: scribbled in note books; authored and performed plays for my parents and sibs; published comics quite the equal of any School Friend!

My father, whom I both feared and adored, read my bedtime story – usually from a large leather-bound copy of Great Short Stories of the World, which included such classics as The Selfish Giant and The Necklace. Despite my youthfulness, we would discuss, at length, the themes and morals contained therein. Under his influence, I soon acquired a love of books and words, ideas and debate.

He was an affectionate and fun-loving person; but he was also prone to bouts of temper, quickly followed by remorse. Highly intelligent (he was a member of Mensa) he found me a disappointment, academically. It was only in adulthood that I realised that he thought he saw in me a mirror-image of himself – i.e. as lacking the discipline to follow through on any of the myriad pursuits which grabbed our interest. Nevertheless, we enjoyed an affinity unmatched by the rest of the family. Naturally, when he began a course in Short Story Writing, although only fourteen, myself, I had to follow suit.

NURTURE – ADD ONE DASH OF DISCIPLINE

It is sometimes fashionable to condemn one’s parents; one’s childhood. I can only commend mine. What my mother lacked in academic prowess, she more than made up for with her practical, down-to-earth, home-making skills, her protection of my sister and me from the worst of my father’s temper, and, crucially, the lessons in self-discipline she liberally dispensed to our bottoms. Red slipper marks were a regular feature! But those lessons proved imperative.

A fun-loving social butterfly, she, too, found me a disappointment, my introvert temperament in sharp contrast to her extrovert nature. Books, being merely collectors of dust as far as she was concerned, were banished to the playroom in the attic of our large house. But that didn’t bother me. On the contrary, I was able to indulge my passion of reading, and writing short stories, out of sight of parental eyes.

AND A GENEROUS DOLLOP OF EXPERIENCE & INSIGHT

My first submission for publication – a short story, with the ghost of a dog as the protagonist – was made when I was fourteen. Having not disclosed my age, naturally, it met with the first of what was to become a growing number of rejection slips. Marriage and motherhood eventually curtailed this budding collection, and it was only after the failure of the one, and the easing into maturity of the other, that I was again able to take up my pen.

MIX WELL, POUR INTO CHOSEN MOLD, TURN OUT WHEN SET

All things work together for good! A friend took me to a seminar, in which, via Myers Briggs Psychometric Profiling (I have a similar personality test if you’d like to take one) delegates were encouraged to discover the Real Me – with all the potential with which you were created.

For the second, no third, time in my life, I felt as if my chains fell off. The low self-esteem and sense of worthlessness that my failed marriage had generated in me, drained away. For the first time ever, I was able to see that writing was not an indulgence. Neither was it a selfish waste of time. It was a gift. A gift which would bring not only pleasure and satisfaction to me, but would be a service for God and for my readers. My aim, through sharing my own experiences, would be to help people to see themselves and their circumstances from a different perspective: to change their lives for the better.

With my new-found confidence, I launched my career. For the next twenty years or so – during which I remarried – I wrote fast and furiously. Much of my material was journalistic: features and articles for magazines. Many were commissioned. Speaking engagements, radio and TV appearances followed; then a number of books: further commissions. Almost all were written under various pen-names. Still haunted by the academic deficiencies my father had identified in me, the shortcomings my mother decried, and my failed marriage, I was lacking in confidence. Taking on another name gave me a sense of other personage, so that it was not me but this other woman who was a Best Selling Author and Speaker.

IN THE EVENT OF POWER FAILURE . . .

And then, at the height of my career, catastrophe struck. With my husband’s business ailing, I had little option but to take on a full-time job. At the same time, my daughter died, suddenly, shockingly, and in suspicious circumstances. Writing and Best Sellers dimmed to a shadowy past.

My daughter had been a heroin addict for more than a decade. Numerous attempts to give up her habit had failed. Until one day, practicing tough love, we told her she was on her own. Thus began her recovery. And it was a remarkable recovery! College. Graduation. A loving relationship. A baby. A job. Desperate to share with others what she’d learned, she talked about taking up social work. The urge to help others – to release them from the bondage of drugs – was paramount in her thinking.

She asked me to write a book, a true-life story. A tale which would reveal the true horror of waking up in a doorway, from a drug-induced sleep, to find the dead body of your friend slumped beside you. An account of the endless futility of stealing to fund a habit which was utterly self-destructive. And then the joy – the euphoria – of breaking out of that prison into a life which was so completely fulfilling.

The book was never written. But we did collaborate on a magazine article, my daughter and I. And that, I fear, was her undoing. Because by revealing her hand, she became a target for the dealers. If they could get her back onto drugs . . .

PUT ALL INGREDIENTS INTO COLD STORAGE . . .

The rest is history. And for years the story has remained untold. The job I’d taken on when my husband’s business was in difficulties, took over. But something was lacking. Something I couldn’t put my finger on.

Until, waking early one morning, I went to my computer and knew what it was. My daughter’s triumph had to be told. Sung above the rooftops. But in such a way as to protect the identity of both the living and the dead – a novel. And in such a way as to be a tribute to her.

REMIX – AND BEGIN AGAIN

Other parents set up charities in the name of loved ones. I chose not to. We’re all bombarded with requests to support this and that. Why add to it? I decided, instead, to support existing charities. To endeavor to do what my daughter had wanted to do. To help kids stay off drugs in the first place. To help children born HIV+ as a result of those who fail.

So this, in effect, was a re-launch of my career as an author. Or to be more accurate, a new beginning. Having written under a pen name in the past, there’s no building on past success. No glory for me. And no gain, either. Only my chosen charities stand to profit. And only then if you buy A Painful Post Mortem. Or buy two and give one to a friend!

This article may be reproduced in any non-commercial website or blog (format) on condition that it appears unaltered, in its entirety, and that the following copyright line and bio are prominently displayed beneath it.

© Copyright Mel Menzies: USED BY PERMISSION

Author of a number of books, one a Sunday Times No 4 Bestseller, Mel Menzies is also an experienced Speaker at live events, as well as on Radio and TV. This article, in its original form, can be found at http://www.melmenzies.co.ukk/

by George Stewart

My first attempts at writing started in high school. I wrote a lot of bad poetry, an occasional decent poem or short story. I have played around with writing different things over the years. I have created quite a bit of Bible study material, sermons and the like. I guess I decided to pursue writing seriously just after my 45th birthday. I found a supportive website community and now it is my passion once again. I have submitted a couple of pieces to a publisher and am waiting on a response. I think I have always wanted to be a writer, and now I am learning how to be a writer. Maybe someday someone will call me a writer. As long as I love it, though, I will be a writer.

by Gordon Basichis

I have wanted to be a writer since I could first remember.   I was always a reader and saw that this was a way to elevate myself in the world and to break away from the more or less provincial environment where I was raised.  I had big ideas in a placer where “big ideas” were viewed with suspicion and fear, and more than its share of derision.    Reading was a definite escape from the mundane to worlds where adventure and romance not only existed but persisted in testing those intrepid few who chose to venture there.

I was twelve or thirteen when I first read Jack London.   The author may have been a more troubled soul than I realized at the time, but at thirteen the socio-political particulars probably escaped me.   I first read “Call of the Wild,” and then “White Fang,” and “The Sea Wolf.”   But the book that really did it for me was his biography.   He had come from modest beginnings and became an adventurer.  He had written about what he had experienced.    He had been an oyster pirate, swiping oysters out of the San Francisco Bay, and then an oyster cop, chasing after the pirates.   I didn’t find this confusing or even contradictory.  I thought it was great, the kind of stuff dreams are not only made of, but a full life as well.  Of course, it didn’t end up so well for London, but I didn’t realize it at the time.

I thought this was the way to go.   Go out there and be adventurous.  Face danger, get into trouble, and then, if you live, go ahead and write about it.   Of course, over time, the initial adolescent quest becomes mitigated by reality and self-discovery.  But not entirely.   I have in fact engaged in a variety of experiences that some may call adventures.  Sometimes, when I look back upon them, I might even go as far as to consider at least a few of them as my “learning mistakes.”   But learn I did.  And I certainly did write about them.
I started early.  I wrote short stories and poetry, but realized the two forms I most preferred were journalism and novels.   Of course when Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Norman Mailer and others,   created more unique forms of writing where journalism or non-fiction and novels coalesced this made it all the more exciting.   But that was to come down the road.

In my teens I was reading some of the classics, Charles Dickens and such.   But my attentions soon turned to the more contemporary writers.  They were speaking in familiar tongues about occurrences and instances that I could relate to.   I read the Beatniks, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti,  and Allen Ginsberg.  I couldn’t get over “Howl,” and that set me off in other directions.  You could really do expressive things and write about them even more expressively.

I read Hemingway and the expatriates.  And then I discovered Grove Press and New Directions Press.  These were the bastions of modern and contemporary letters.   Fascinating and compelling writers who were either relatively unknown to most teachers or considered much too terrifying for the high school curriculum.

Grove and New Directions offered not only American writers but award winning modern and contemporary writers from around the world.   Perhaps most importantly I discovered on my occasional trips to New York and during my time living there that Marlboro Bookstore offered the remainders for these two publishers at a buck a copy.   It was the sixties and a buck was a buck, but still a bargain.  I would stock up and read writers from around the world.   And then I would go back for more.

I was definitely caught up in the romance of it all.   It was the arts, to be nurtured and preserved in its purist forms.  Who knew back then that publishing and some of the art forums would transit into middlebrow marketing vehicles that were increasingly mundane and repetitious?  Not me.  Not then.

Knowing nothing about the “industry,” I sold my first book when I was twenty-four years old, and then published “The Constant Travellers” at twenty-seven.   But then life intervened in what was otherwise an erratic and circular career and took me on journeys that I couldn’t have imagined as a former street kid in possession of not much more than a Smith Corona and an attitude.

There was my friendship with Vicki Morgan, long time mistress to Alfred Bloomingdale, scion of American politics and industry and member of Ronald Reagan’s “kitchen cabinet.” That led to priceless insights into both the deepest nature of greed, sex scandal and romance. Not to mention government corruption, and finally, murder. The original sex scandal led to my own scandal and the ensuing embarrassment and personal humiliation.  Finally, it came the defrocking of my youthful sense of immortality. It also taught me about the double edged sword in possessing information. Particularly possessing the right information on the wrong people.

It was a valuable lesson, or really, a series of valuable lessons that culminated in my book, “Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story.”

All modesty aside I coined the phrase for posterity.  If Vicki were a male instead of female, she would have been categorized as a sexual adventurer instead of a Hollywood slut.

In my novel “Constant Travellers,” a humorous new age Western, a somewhat metaphysical book contesting that chance meetings are hardly “chance” and that there are no accidents in life.  Events may seem random, but sooner or later one will see the connection. I saw the connection–my exposure to sexual and political scandal and murder, delivered me into the world of espionage.

I have no doubt it was the Vicki Morgan book that led me to a man I depict as Noah Brown, literally a rocket scientist, long time upper level intelligence operative, and adviser to eleven presidential administrations. Like most accidents that are fated to happen, Noah and I were destined for major adventure. In the mid and late eighties I served as his personal aide, while Noah Brown uncovered much of the Chinese Espionage Networks operating in California and throughout the United States. The confidential task force that Brown was part of was responsible for the discovery of Chinese espionage tactics and methodology, as well as its origins and operations.

I published my novel about this experience. It is called “The Guys Who Spied for China.”   The mainstream publishers wanted me to write the same-same, an innocent gets in over his head, freaks out and holds steady, despite his moral dilemmas.   Minstrel’s Alley, an independent publisher allowed me to publish the story I really wanted to tell.  The Guys Who Spied for China is different than most spy books, since it is quirky and, as some critics have written, “darkly humorous,” and character based.  My intent in writing The Guys Who Spied for China is to allow the reader to experience what it feels like to take the E-Ticket ride through this particular shadow world.

As with the Vicki Morgan book, it was my turn again to participate in real events and see how they were translated to the media, who in turn interpreted these events in the way it best saw fit. Despite inaccurate assessments and misinterpretations, I dare guess this process of translating reality into palpable stories has been with us throughout the course of civilization. Some know it as history.

As the Co-Founder of Corra Group, which specializes in background checks and corporate investigation, I came to know it as life.

WRITING ON THE RAILS
By Gordon Durich

When did writing first really grab me by the short and curlies?

I think it must have been when I was riding on a train coming home from college. I was in my early 20’s, and I had always loved words. I was hooked when I started reading a magazine about surfing, of all things. I had read the classics and had contributed reviews to the college newspaper. Words were swirling around in my head and wanting to be released!

I got home and shut my bedroom door, and wrote and wrote. It all came flowing out, like a wave onto the shore. Writing was a release, a therapy. A way to express myself in a way I could never have done before.

I went onto bravely submit story ideas to publishers and apply for a cadetship in journalism. Years later I found myself writing a weekly column for a major metropolitan newspaper in Australia. I freelanced for magazines also. I wrote songs. Anything to do with words.
Now I look back at the formative years of putting pen to paper, having gone from typewriter and carbon paper to computer and printout, it’s been a journey indeed.

From writing in Australia, to penning my words in England, to becoming a professional writer in America, I love having written. I especially love having feedback from my family and friends.
When a friend recently saw the play I wrote “Grandmas Rock!” performed, she said “I really enjoyed it. You can really write!”
Sometimes we need validation, approval and a pat on the proverbial back. It keeps up writing. And loving to share words and work with the world.

by Ruth Belena

It began as a love of reading when I was very young. I knew how much I enjoyed writing personal stories (composition) for school homework well before the age of 11. Like most teens I kept a private journal and wrote poetry. I never aspired to be a writer or wanted to become one. I simply wrote and have been writing all my life.

by Dennis Aubuchon

I have always liked to write but when I actually became a writer doing what I do now started when I had the more time to devote time to it. I began my first writing activity through my first book and the experience of seeing my name on the cover of a book could not be put into words. My first book was published in 2003 and the second edition was published in December 2005. I have expanded my writing since I began and now write articles on hot topics of the day. I have written over 140 articles and have views to them not total more than 190,000. I continually strive to find opportunities to write for pay. I am now recognized as a professional journalist through helium.com based on the content and quality of the articles I have written.

As I became comfortable and learned more I share my experiences with other writers through several networking sites such as this. I have also created my own web site which I also enjoy and provide information for other writers through articles of others and myself. I also provide links to sites with marketing information and opportunities. I continually write articles and have had some articles for pay. I continually strive to find opportunities to write for pay. I am now recognized as a professional journalist through helium.com based on the content and quality of the articles I have written. Feeling that you are a writer is one thing but being recognized as one is totally different.

by Rob Benes

I was a college freshman and undecided in my major. My first-year English professor seemed impressed with my writing skills. She encouraged me to talk with journalism and English professors and take a few introductory classes in each area. I eventually chose the journalism route. It’s been a fun ride ever since.

by Holly Peterson

Even when I was little, I can’t remember a time I did not like writing. Once when I was maybe six, I wrote a poem about Thanksgiving. I proudly remember standing on a dining room chair to read it to everyone. I honestly cannot remember how it was received. But I do remember my feelings and the bliss of pen on paper.

The writing continued whether in long (really LONG detailed letters—whew) , being the news writer/editor for the high school paper, journal writing, etc. To me a love of reading and writing sometimes are paired. For me this is a truth. I am in love with both…

by Frederick Malphurs

by Bonnie Kern

I started my education in my 40s with a general-equivalency degree and writing was my worst score when I was sixteen years old. I thought that if I just got enough education, I could tell the right people, in the right way, so they would help yesterday’s victims – the girls and women who were abused, especially by incest, as children and ended up in the mental-health and criminal-justice systems as I did.

The adviser I called “Dr. Dean”, a sociology and criminal justice professor at Drake University had me submit a paper to the Iowa Sociological Association’s 1995 annual meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, where I won the Mary Alice Ericson Award. That day changed my life forever.

I heard two other students presenting a paper they called participant observation. They had been in the back seat of a police car for an evening and observed what the officer did. It occurred to me that I had been doing that my whole life. I told Dr. Dean, “There isn’t anything wrong with me. I’ve just been doing participant observation for 40 years.” He laughed and nodded.

He sent me to the hardest writing classes the university offered and told me that, with enough education, I was in the position to be a communication conduit between corrections and the prisoners. He told me that it was sociologically imperative that I write my story to help the girls and women sitting in the chair I once occupied and crying into the pillow my tears had soiled decades before. I was able to present him with the first copy before he died in August 2008.

I published my autobiographical novel, Proclivity, in 2007 to help girls & women who were abused as children, especially by incest. Readers tell me that either they cannot put it down or they must lay it aside to grieve for me and them, but they always have tears in their eyes when they thank me for writing it because they were able to heal from things they never wanted to look at. I am now using my forty years experience in reentry to write The Steel Ceiling and give hope to those who identify with me.

I received my undergraduate degree in sociology from Drake University on Mother’s Day 2000 and my Master of Science in Education, Certified Rehabilitation Counseling degree from Drake University on May 16, 2009. Forty years almost to the day of being released from prison on May 22, 1969. I was the first woman allowed to participate in Iowa’s work-release program in the 1960s, restoration of citizenship in 1974 and an executive pardon in 1982.

I started a nonprofit agency, Assessing Disability Barriers, in last month. Please visit my blog:

http://assessingdisabilitybarriers.blogspot.com/2010/02/iowa-women-in-reentry.html

by Bill Ruesch

I hear people say that they always knew they wanted to write. Those people often wrote stories as children. To others the writing bug came later. I was in high school. My 11th grade English teacher submitted a poem I had written to a state poetry contest. I didn’t know she had done this, and I didn’t know that I had won some recognition until the school principal called me out of class and told me. I must have appeared totally discombobulated, because this was the first time ever I had been called to the Principal’s office — I couldn’t imagine what I had done wrong — but by the time I arrived, I was sure it was something. I had been known to be a smart-mouth and a passive-aggressive little pr_ _ k. Since all my transgressions, until now, had flown safely under the radar, it was a total mystery how they reached the top of the school hierarchy.

You would have thought my walk down the empty halls, with my mind agitating like a crowd whose team was 2 points from the championship with 3 seconds on the clock, and my hands sweating like the locker room after 2nd period gym class, was a slow walk to the gallows.

I was shown into the inner sanctum. The Principal smiled, rose, reached over the walnut desk and shook my hand. “This must be how they do it,” I thought, “just before strapping the condemned into the electric chair.”

“Have a seat,” he said, still smiling. “Congratulations.”

Huh?

“Congratulations for getting an honorable mention for your poem in the Utah State Poetry Society’s Youth Contest.”

He seemed sincere, but I didn’t have a clue about what he was saying. He might as well have been speaking Swahili.

He presented me with a newspaper clipping and there was my name and the name of the poem I had written circled in red ink.

Later, came an embarrassment of attention. The school newspaper printed my poem, a photo of me, and an interview. The question was asked, “When do you write poetry?”

I responded, “Just when I’m in the mood,” followed by a nervous laugh.

The headline read — His Moodiness Amuses Him. See what I meant by embarrassment? What high school boy wants to be thought of as moody? I wasn’t the athletic type, but I didn’t run or throw a baseball like a girl either. Moodiness was a term reserved for girly-boys. That wasn’t me, even if I wasn’t the fastest runner on the track. I have a long torso and short legs. I wasn’t built for speed.

From that day on, I thought of myself not as a poet, but an occasional writer of poetry. Defining me as a poet took many, many, more years and honestly, I’m still not sure I deserve that particular tag.

by Lorraine Cobcroft

I think I realized I wanted to write when I was about three or four. My mother was trying to help my nine year old cousin learn to write description. She went down on all fours and pretended to be a rabbit to encourage him to write ‘hopped’ instead of ‘went’.

I wrote some great stories in primary school, and won an essay contest, but when I started making noises about writing for a living, I was bombarded with warnings about how difficult it was to make money at the craft and how it was really only a ‘hobby thing’ and ‘not a real job’. That effectively halted any serious writing attempts, although I did have some bits and pieces of ‘hobby writing’ published.

My writing career was born out of necessity when I was nearly forty. I was running a software importing business that was struggling for survival, and I asked a customer for advice on how to increase sales. He told me the documentation was dreadful, and users needed help to learn to use the product. I decided to write a correspondence training program.

Some bright spark advised me to do a market test before investing in creating a product, so I ran a three-line advertisement in an obscure magazine offering a 1500-page course for $1400. I planned to tell responders that it was a market test, but I received fifteen orders the day the magazine hit the street, and $21,000 was just too much to reject. I told buyers I would send a lesson each month for fifteen months, and charge their credit card by installments. For the next fifteen months I spent almost every night writing frantically, and the days taking orders and arranging more ads. My long-suffering husband produced the course material on a simplex photocopier, manually duplexing by feeding pages back through and running up and down the length of a trestle table under the house collating books of a hundred plus pages. Happily, the sales quickly justified investment in a duplex copier, and soon after in a digital printer that produced complete, collated books at the press of a button.

It was a shock to realize that I was actually earning a living as a writer, albeit through a writing genre that I had never really anticipated embracing. The reviews and testimonials were almost as exciting as the income.

Today, I write e-books on business and health and finance; business reports and investment offers; advertisements, web copy, brochure copy, and sales letters; software reviews; political comment; poetry, and short stories. I’m working on a fictionalized version of my husband’s life story, and I’m planning a series of travel books.

The arrival of grandchildren has added a new dimension to my writing. I published my first children’s book recently, and donated the author proceeds to my daughter’s favorite charity, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation. Marketing Melanie’s Easter Gift (www.melanieseastergift.com) has proved a challenge, but hearing little kids tell me they loved reading my book gives me goosebumps!

I’m a writer, and every time I write that word in the ”Occupation” field on a form, I get a buzz from it. I love writing. I’m excited by the power of words. I love seeing my words in print.

My family told me only the ‘lucky and connected few’ make money out of writing. My advice is different. I tell people the passionate and determined make money out of writing. If you love it, do it. You might struggle at first, but the dollars will flow.

by Michael S. Copeland

I was a struggling student in the Midwest and school was a challenge for me.  Third grade English class in the 1960’s was a blur of dangling participles and diagrammed sentences….This was all Greek to me and I struggled…..My teacher, the beloved, Nellie Gates asked me to try poems which I found to my liking and she graded me on the “curve” to help me in class.  One poem was selected and she was instrumental in getting it published in our local newspaper.  That was when the light bulb came on and I realized that words are more than letters.  They can evoke feelings and emotions.  Throughout my high school years, college and beyond I have written poems.  Through the Vietnam era, the riots in Detroit, a failed first marriage the words have continue to flow.  Albeit not as many as I would like, as my poetry seems to have suffered at the hand of making a living and raising my delightful family along with my darling wife.  With my work schedule having fallen off and my travels more a rarity now, I must once again clear my mind for writing.  To have a dream come true you must only have the courage to pursue it.

I’m a newbie here, and probably not old enough to call myself a writer. But I’d like to share my story as well. I guess I always knew I was going to be a writer but somehow couldn’t accept it. In secondary school, I wrote few poems, recited poems (in my native tongue, Mongolian) and was finalist to few contests. Nevertheless, I didn’t really like writing back then.

Then, as a teenager I adopted a new hobby — watching movies. All the sci-fi, horror and psychological thrillers blew my mind, and with all the new scientific discoveries and technological innovations I saw endless possibilities. But still, the level of writing big stuff (especially in English) is far away from me. I always found pleasure from fantasizing a story but I guess I was too lazy to put them down. Plus, I thought I needed some techniques to learn about writing. So I started putting down story ideas.

Although I followed the herd and pursued a business administration/foreign language major, I wrote few short story drafts in college. I couldn’t choose creative writing as a major because I thought it wouldn’t have any future.

But over time I read about many successful writers and got more motivated. I currently run a blog called Mongol angle in my free time. I try to show Mongolia from new “angles” to the world. It’s in English and is supposed to be funny. (Check out my epistolary “Letters to Genghis Khan”, btw )

In terms of fictional writing, I am planning to publish a short story collection by this summer. It’ll be in English and Mongolian. I posted my first few stories in web forums and they said I had a good idea and after some revision I should send it to magazines for publishing. But I currently don’t know which magazine to send and still having hard time revising them.

In terms of non-fictional writing, it’s more circumstantial and career-driven. My current full-time work has given me a lot to learn and I have had enough knowledge and confidence to envision writing books and development issues (Yeah, Mongolia’s not the greatest country in the world — anymore ). But I digress.