July 28, 2020

Did you ever want to see your name in print, like in a newspaper or magazine as the writer of an article or story? I did. And it happened this way. Check it out and you may learn how you can start your writing career.

I was 11 and my 4H club appointed me the Reporter with the responsibility to take notes at every meeting and write them up and submit them to the local newspaper. I have to admit I liked it, seeing the headlines: Woodside Pins and Needles by Carol Brennan in the Daily Review under the headline Local 4H News.

My fifth and then sixth grade teachers appointed me editor of the school paper, but honestly, I don’t remember much about that. However, I did love writing for the high school newspaper and writing and producing my own radio show on the local radio station WTTC. I got to interview teachers and students and then record that material at the station. A very big deal to a teenager.

Time passed. We started a family and my husband went to college. First I started writing for the student wives’ paper. Then I submitted some samples to a local Christian weekly and was assigned to my own regular column: Carol’s Corner. I wrote that column under another name – King’s Knotes when the paper changed hands, but I wrote for over ten years: book reviews, recipes and hospitality ideas, and Bible studies.

The point is I looked for opportunities to write and found them, and I wrote. And wrote and wrote for whoever would pay me, and sometimes for people who didn’t. For newspapers, magazines, educational material in French for the African church, and all kinds of materials for stateside church-related publishers.

So why have I told you all of this? Because my focus has shifted. Though I continue to write and take writing classes, now I want to encourage you to write and get your work out there.

Along the way I earned a B.A. in Communications Journalism and a Masters in English/Creative Writing. But I learned this, you can learn what I paid significant amounts of money to learn, by going to writers’ conferences, joining writing groups, taking classes at the library. and hanging out around this part of my blog. If you are new here, scroll down and see what you might have missed in earlier classes.

September 9. That’s the next date you need to mark on your calendar to join us in my Zoom classroom. From 10-12 noon, on Wednesdays we will be studying and writing with an emphasis on characters and their place in our work. In the afternoon on Wednesdays, from 1-3, the nonfiction/memoir writers will be meeting, again to write and learn how to bring our real characters to life.

You DON’T have to be a member of the Abington Community Library to take either one or both of these classes. Just email Lmaurer@albright.org to register.

Meanwhile as we wait for our fall classes to begin, I will be posting more suggestions on how you can break the ice in your writing career right here.

And you can find more info at this site: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-to-start-freelance-writing-1360255