These Unexpected Lessons Helped Me Build a Successful and Satisfying Writing Career
It’s the advice I didn’t take that turned out to be the difference
Joanne called from New York.
In the days before text and email were standard practices and long before editors from big-time magazines were calling me, I was sending out queries with self-addressed stamped envelopes enclosed. If you saw one of those in your mailbox, you knew it was a rejection without opening the envelope.
But today no envelope. Today, Joanne, an editor from New York was calling me with an assignment.
“This is a great idea,” she said. “We want this for our Thanksgiving issue.”
I punched the air with my fist. Heard the editor say stuff about rights and the contract — “it’s in the mail” — but my mind was buzzing and I was having a hard time staying focused.
I was thinking about how this article would appear in a magazine my mom would see. One she could buy off the checkstand display case. One she could show to her friends proving that her eldest did in fact have a “real job.”
This was a big-time assignment. And, the $1.50 per word rate would cover my rent for more than a month.
