I wrote my first article for a church newsletter when I was 12 years old in 1968. I will never forget what it felt like to see my name in print. I’ve been in love with writing ever since.
In my 21st year, when I moved to Seattle from Jacksonville, Fla., where I was raised, I experienced the luxury of a six-month sabbatical. I spent that time reading the great novels of the 19th and 20th centuries, and writing poetry, while wandering the byways of a slimmer, youthful Seattle, before Microsoft came along.
By 1987, I was now mothering a preschooler and a toddler. That’s when I launched my first magazine. It was called New Families, and it was about mothers and fathers discovering and sharing new ways to combine work and family. This was not a new idea. It was simply a return to the old ways, which were still as rich and meaningful as ever. However, the 1980s were a decade in which many were seeking that coveted corporate space above all else, leaving little time for family relationships.
While women were adopting ill-fitting business suits, I wrote about new ideas at the time: telecommuting, flexible working arrangements, and the rebirth of cottage industry. I learned those hard, rewarding lessons of what it was like to work at home with small children, when few women were doing it. I discovered how to juggle a toddler on my lap, while working on my Mac SE. And, even though this was pre-Internet, I began to form relationships all over the U.S., receiving tutoring in this new way of life from other women who were pursuing the same lifestyle. The magazine, though it did not make money, (as is true for most small lifestyle magazines) gave me insight and wisdom that was priceless. I discovered I was right, after all. It was possible to throw off the chains of corporate slavery and freely reinvent a life as a work-at-home mother.
From that experience, over the next few years, I wrote a how-to book, “Growing a Business/Raising a Family.” Then, came interviews with national media, which found our family a fascinating news topic. Health Magazine paid what was likely a ridiculous sum of money to send a crew, including a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, and a truly odd German photographer to profile our family of five. Our clients at that time included several national family advocacy organizations that contracted with us to produce both newsletters and books.
The intensity of my life increased when I took on a half-time job reporting for The Oregonian, covering breaking news on the North Oregon Coast. I said to myself, “O.K., I’ll start a business journal so I won’t have to run out of the house with my notebook and camera when a boat sinks, or a flood comes. I can stay home and control my time.” I published that monthly journal — Lower Columbia Business — with my husband, for three years. It was a lot of fun getting to know all these creative small business owners and sharing their stories.
Once the community discovered what a business journal could do for the town, I was asked to run for the Astoria City Council. Life became absolutely crazy after I was elected to office. Even though my work continued to be flexible, now with a fourth child on the way, it finally dawned on me that time actually is finite. If you divide it into more and more pieces, eventually, those little slivers give no time for meaningful relationships with anyone. You really can spread yourself too thin.
So, after two years of flexibly juggling an insane amount of stuff, I just quit everything, and we uprooted our family of four children, resettling on 40 acres with a shack in Kentucky. It was an absolutely amazing and wonderful experience. I wrote a couple of practice novels in my first year there, and I discovered that I loved the world you could spin inside your head. At the same time, I began to work as a freelance magazine writer for national trade publications. E-ink did not yet exist, print was still king, and these publications paid a handsome sum compared to today’s standards.
When my last child was born, I put my writing down for a while, and then I picked it up again with different eyes, as I had become a Christian, following a near-death experience while pregnant with my fifth child. Now there was a whole new field of writing before me: theology. As I wrote devotionals for a tiny Kentucky newspaper, and accounts of my personal religious journey, it kindled a renewed sense of wonderment at how amazing life really is. I loved going back and forth between the worlds of theology and business writing. I worked in my little garden, producing an amazing array of the best-tasting food I have ever experienced before or after. It was a beautiful time in my life filled with the wonders of raising five thoughtful, ethical children, while continuing to practice my writing craft.
Today, after parenting for almost 27 years, for the first time in my life, I am now writing fulltime, as my youngest is in her first year of college. I live in Spokane and still dream of my days as a gardener in Kentucky. My hundred or so houseplants in my townhouse apartment serve to remind me daily of the beauty of living plants.
It’s a tough time to be a writer. The days of being paid a dollar per word as a general trade writer are gone, not to mention that a dollar is worth just half of what it was when I first began to write for trade publications. I used to be paid $1,200 in inflation-adjusted dollars for an 800-word article. I was paid $1,500 a month (adjusting for inflation) for a half-time freelance job with The Oregonian. Today, people regularly recruit writers, while offering to pay a penny a word. Before click-through ads made their debut, advertisers could not accurately measure ROI. Now, they are in a position to drive a hard bargain with content producers. Google is the giant in the writer’s office, offering both rich research resources, and, at the same, constantly tweaking a search engine that still allows mediocre content to reign freely.
That’s the down side to all this: the more the Internet has populated e-space with higher and higher word counts, the more meaningless it all threatens to become. A society saturated with bazillions of words loses the ability to see the beauty and wonderment of the fine art of crafting ideas and sharing knowledge. The most important word for the craft of writing is editing.
As I pick my way through the flood of words, spewed out at ever-increasing speeds, I aspire to carefully and thoughtfully wind my way along the path as a writer. I will always love the craft in all its various forms. It is my life’s passion.
Fiction calls to me. And, now is the time for a new beginning.
