FROM 'THERE' TO 'HERE'

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR...

My first paid column-feature was published in a weekly Alberta newspaper called, The Whitecourt Star, circulation then was 12,000.

Two weeks before the maiden launch of my professional journalism debut, I’d walked into the local newspaper’s office, with my three-year-old daughter in a stroller and six-week-old son in my arms. Without an appointment, I introduced myself then handed the publishers [husband and wife owners] a large brown envelope with three sample column ideas.

The next day they actually called to ask when I wanted to start...with a column heading titled ‘Reflections’

***Life lesson learned from this event: if we don’t ask, if we don’t risk, if we don’t try – then we don’t harvest…

Had I walked into the Whitecourt Star that first day with certainty and confidence? Nope! I was so numb with doubt I could barely think. But if we manage to cling to our courage - you like me discover that we often accomplish some of your best ‘stuff’ scared half out of your mind.

Those sample columns gave me a three-week head start, good thing too. With a toddler and newborn any organizational follow-through was more accident than design. Legos, puzzles and Fisher-Price now my main interior design theme, I set up my ‘office’ in the laundry room. Since the washer, the dryer and ironing board took up most of the floor area there was just enough room for my sewing machine cabinet that just fit wedged between the washing machine and wall behind the door. When the sewing machine was down my new Sears catalogue portable, blue typewriter fit nicely on top. Typing paper, ribbon, pens and other writing supplies [like whiteout] shared shelf space with laundry detergent, stain remover and an iron.

I was all set.

That first afternoon after daughter and son were down for a nap, I put a clean piece of paper in the typewriter, rolled it through to start typing then went into full panic mode. With a jolt it hit me. I had committed to producing a column every-single-week well into the distant future! Someone was paying me for my work and holding valuable print space on a page that local businesses wanted for their ads! Yikes!

Two and a half years later I left my weekly column behind with a mixture of regret and relief.

The regret part, certainly understood by any writer reading this - was directly attached to an opportunity the publishers of The Whitecourt Star [regional weekly newspaper] gave to a virtual unknown. The newspaper owners were both brave and bold.

The relief I felt [momentarily] was persistent doubt that kept returning each week that I could create and then write anything interesting or relevant - again.

I have since learned that [1.] every writer has that same feeling and [2.] that feeling never goes away – which is actually good. Those clouds of doubt that hover just above the head of every writer I’ve met, is healthy. So long as your doubt doesn’t block you from writing it actually prompts you [well me at least] to strive to write the next feature, the next column or next book as engrossing or more enthralling than the last.

For me that shadow of doubt has been a self-inflicted form of quality control. People may praise my work or criticize my work, but I always want my readers to ‘get something’ from my work. And – personally I want to avoid wasting any reader’s time.

Nevertheless, beyond regret or relief or doubt something else had happened to me during my 168 weeks writing a regular column. Something had shifted.

Actually the ‘shift’ began with my three years on The Static but became even more deeply rooted when someone not only published what I wrote they paid me to write, then kept paying me and kept publishing my work because the page on which my column appeared was also the page businesses wanted their ads.

I remember the first time I actually acknowledged I was a writer. I had tagged along with [former] Hubby to an oil and gas conference in Alburquerque, New Mexico. During a social mingling of attendees with their spouses someone asked me what I did. Out of my mouth came the words, “I’m a writer.”

With my own surprise response, I now ‘thought’ of myself as a writer. Also, at that gathering I realized it had been more than three years since I had written much of anything, except a fiction plot draft still in a three-ring binder - that decades later would become my first mystery-suspense, SHADOWS AND LIGHT.

Returning home I was motivated to buy an actual desk and found an old rolltop then dusted off my little portable blue typewriter [not yet tempted to buy a PC] and again prepared to stick my neck out, testing myself further. And because my first professional break had been with a weekly newspaper, I targeted The Mirror a city-wide weekly newspaper published for various Calgary communities, by the Calgary Sun [daily] national, newspaper chain.

This time I had a scrapbook of Whitecourt Star columns and feature clippings. Those clippings became a huge part of my writing resume. Monthly, weekly and daily publications need to know contributors [you] can be consistent and meet deadlines.

Along with five new column ideas I included photocopies of my six favorite columns published in the Whitecourt Star. I then mailed everything along with a short cover letter to The Mirror editor, Harry Pegg. At the mailbox I crossed my fingers – which in truth - with prayer, is how most of us send out our work.

Two weeks later a phone call from, Harry Pegg, editor of The Mirror still caught me off guard. I was prepared for a nice letter with; ‘thanks, but no thanks’. I was not prepared for a personal phone call. And certainly not a phone call from someone who liked my work then asked when it would be convenient for me to meet with him personally at The Mirror office to discuss details…

My vision was quite blurry when I checked my kitchen calendar. I struggled to remain sounding calm – as if newspaper editors with a readership circulation of 400,000 [plus] had called me many times before…

We set a date and a time the following week, it was late November. After he hung up, I sat on my kitchen floor still holding the phone and working to reorganize my scattered brain cells. B-e-c-a-u-s-e with this one call I committed to writing another weekly column, but this time for a readership audience 30 times greater than my Whitecourt run. Once again, the weight of my new obligation ‘hit’ me! If I messed up this time, far more people would be witness to that fact.

At my first meeting, The Mirror editor, Harry Pegg and I - along with his assistant editor, Kit Poole talked as easily as if we had known each other for years instead of only minutes. That type of instant ease is always a good ‘sign’. I was still freelance not staff, but the pay offer each week had doubled, and so too had my responsibility for reliable quality…

My introductory Mirror column was set to appear in the first month of the New Year in the January 28^th edition - renamed: ‘…that’s life’ [all in lower case]. Of my first five samples the editor selected one for my Mirror column launch. This time I had a five-week lead, both kids were in school, and my office was no longer the laundry room…