Booking Through Thursday: Writing

Readers read, it’s true, but they write? Do you? Write, that is?

I do! The two have pretty much always gone hand in hand for me–I loved reading stories and I remember I used to beg the adults in my life to make up stories because I thought it was just this really easy thing to do, and they’d all be like, “I can’t,” and I refused to take that for an answer. I think I truly got drawn into writing when I got a diary one Christmas and discovered that writing could make me feel better, and on top of that, I started making up my own stories and dabbled in bad pre-teen/teenage poetry, like ya do. It was always something I had fun doing, and I even remember feeling inspired sometimes.

I had it in my head that no matter what career path I chose, I’d always do writing on the side, and part of that was not thinking of writing itself as a viable career option. I mean, you still hear it all the time–I majored in writing when I went to college, and it’s basically four years (and then some, at times) of listening to people tell you that you’re wasting your time in money, sometimes subtly, sometimes not. My future sister-in-law just started her freshman year of college and went in as a writing major, and her parents focus on her lack of job opportunities, even though I’m sitting over here at a company who hired me for that degree and have given me a raise every year. But I digress.

I did some writing for the local paper during summers in college, occasional picked up some weekend assignment in the fall, and I was offered a part-time crime-writing job but had already accepted my current position. And although my day job isn’t really involved with writing, I still do plenty of it in my spare time.

This is the part where I shamelessly self-promote. I’ve had pieces of creative nonfiction published, the most recent being this piece for The Good Men Project. I used to regularly contribute to Examiner until they recently shut down, which I was not sad about, but the work I do for CBS is gonna be coming to an end soon, too. The one thing still going strong right now is AXS, although the CBS work has led to another opportunity I just found out about a few hours ago.