A couple of questions I am asked a lot are: 1) Did I always want to be a writer? And 2) how did I go from being a nurse to writing for a living?
The answer to the first questions is: I dunno…maybe…when I was 12, I thought I’d be a midwife, and a journalist for National Geographic, and a best-selling novelist, and maybe a dancer.
The answer to the second question is: It was simply a matter of necessity. I was burned out as a night-shift labor and delivery nurse. I had cancer, four children, and I had to make money. I didn’t know what I was going to do but I knew something had to give. Then, a couple of friends stepped up and helped me figure it out.
This was among the hardest times of my life. I was sick, I had a ton of responsibilities, and I didn’t have the privilege of falling apart. Two good girlfriends took me out for walks that I swear, kept me sane. During these walks, I talked about all the surgeries and about going through chemo and radiation. I talked about how hard it was to keep from freaking out the kids. and about how scary my prognosis was, especially considering I had a newborn baby. It was hard to put it all in words, and it was a profound, overwhelming lifechanging experience, but believe it or not, we laughed a lot! So much of what I was going through was just stupid silly. It was dark, but the other side of that darkness was the pure kindness shown by friends who helped me envision an entirely new future.
They encouraged me to write down what I was going through. They edited those stories and told me I should try to get them published. I’d never done any serious writing before, but it turned out I was good at it. I bundled those cancer stories together into a book and sent them off to a few publishers, all of whom flat out rejected them. One publisher, however, gave me the inside scoop. She told me I needed to send a book proposal, not an entire book, because publishers don’t have time to read every damn manuscript that uninformed writers like me send them. She was blunt, but it was exactly what I needed to hear. In fact, that little detail – book proposal, not the book - had never occurred to me, but looking back, duh…I mean, what was I thinking?
That publisher also said something else that made a huge difference in the trajectory of my career. She said, “If you’re going to write about having cancer, then you need to offer readers a reason to read it. It’s not enough to just share what you want through, even if some of it was funny. You have to leave them with a take home message, something they can learn, some kind of reward for having gone through this journey with you. Otherwise, you just bum them out. And, if you choose to write about cancer, then that’s what you’ll be known as – a cancer writer. She asked, “Is that what you really want?” It was not.
Writing those stories was my initiation into the world of writing, publishing, and the possibilities of an entirely new career. One of my walking friends edited for a local publisher and she invited me to submit a story for an anthology of “women’s wisdom after 40.” She thought I would write about cancer, but instead, I wrote about grocery shopping, and it was good enough to get published.
That was my beginning. I still worked at the hospital, while raising my kids, and there was no time or money to go back to school. I knew however, there was a lot I needed to learn. I found an online course through my community college about how to write for magazines and I learned how to write pitches – letters to editors with my ideas for articles.
The course recommended that new writers start out small, by volunteering to write your church newsletter or your neighborhood newspaper. I didn’t have time for that. I needed to make money, so I pitched ideas to editors at the magazines I saw on my grocery store shelves. Eventually, one was accepted by Better Homes & Gardens. One pitch led to another, and another and bit by bit, story by story, I became a regular contributor to several magazines and newspapers. I leaned heavily on what I knew and wrote about nursing, health, parenting, and food. After several years, I was making enough as a writer to replace my nursing income and I left the hospital behind. Phew!
Soon, magazine work moved to the web, and I picked up assignments writing for web sites and online publications. Eventually, I got an advice column, writing about prenatal care and pregnancy. Then, my editor and I teamed up to write a book. It didn’t sell well, but it taught me about the book-writing business. Later, an editor at Penguin Random House caught sight of my pregnancy column (yes, she was pregnant) and they offered me a book deal. It was a Julie and Julia miracle and I’m proud to say, that book still sells.
Magazine work led me to assignments about pregnancy and maternal health conditions in developing countries, which led to opportunities to write for humanitarian organizations I loved. That opened a whole new chapter in my writing career, writing for non-profits and corporations.
And that’s how I went from nursing to writing. Now, I write by day and coach writers in the afternoon. I teach brand new writers how to start their own careers and more experienced writers to keep theirs going. I teach them how to write for blogs, magazines, websites, and publishers, to write book proposals, get book deals, and complete their manuscripts.
I teach them to do what I learned on my own over a twenty-year career, and I wish I’d had someone like me. Figuring it all out on my own was difficult and time consuming and if I hadn’t been so driven by the need to make a living, I probably would have given up. It wasn’t the writing part that was daunting. It was not knowing how the writing business works. Now that I know, I’m determined to make it easier for others to write and get published, whether they need to make a living from it or not. Every writer has something that drives them. My job as their coach is to help them tap into that and use it take their writing where they want it to go.
I didn’t exactly become what my 12-year-old self-envisioned, but I came pretty close. I was a labor and delivery nurse, not a midwife. I wasn’t a National Geographic journalist, but I did travel on assignment many times for magazines. I’m not a novelist (yet), but I’ve written and published two books. And I’ve gotten paid for every part of it. Did I ever become a dancer? Sure… I dance…sort of.. in the kitchen, at weddings…y’know, like normal people.
