A Writer’s Spring

Back in March I took a two week-long writing “boot camp” online with Anne Trubek, professor, editor, and author of A Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses. I’ve been freelancing pretty much since I graduated from college fifteen years ago, and for the past three and half years, I’ve been a magazine editor (on the other side of the freelancing coin). So I feel like an old hand, and yet, there are still mysteries to unlock in the writing life. This course was incredibly worthwhile in that regard, and it provided a forum to intensively share ideas and drafts with a group of intelligent and passionate writers, which was something that I had been missing. One of the many things I took away is that I should have a website, landing page, blog, whatever you want to call it, where you can showcase your work. Thus, this new website.

Since taking Anne’s course, I’ve sold four articles–two already published, two in contract–double what was accepted in all of 2012. Partially that’s about finding the time to work on freelance projects with a full-time editorial job and a family, and partially it’s because the class (and its participants) forced to me take essays and ideas I had been working on and bring them to fruition. It makes all the difference.