Day 1, Kay: The Working Writer’s beginnings

I have always written. In the fourth grade I took a piece of notebook paper and created The Mudville News, drawing pictures and writing stories about the people at East Elementary. My classmates really liked it, but I couldn't keep up, producing all those copies by hand.

If only I'd had an iPad back then.

Despite my passion for prose, upon graduation from college I quickly succumbed to pressures to abandon my assistant editor's job at a trade journal for something more practical. It was the ’80s; everyone was getting an MBA and getting rich. I took a job in sales.

Ad sales at a newspaper kept me sort of near the world of words, but that's like saying living in the Gaza Strip promotes multiculturalism.

I rose through the ranks of the business side of newspapers, from ad sales to circulation to promotion to marketing to online, and, finally, to audience development, working for Cox Communications, Gannett, Knight-Ridder, and the New York Times Regional Group.

But I dreamed of writing screenplays and books. Fifteen years ago I threw myself into learning how book publishing worked. I went to workshops. I read how-to guides. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I received hundreds of rejections. I got an agent who promptly couldn't sell my book. I put the writing aside. For weeks. Months. Sometimes years.

In 2013 I renewed my commitment to learning how the craft of writing worked. I read 22 current bestsellers in three months, and I improved.

My coauthor of The Paragraph Ranch is a great writer and knows all about style and craft. I write from passion and have learned a few axioms along the way. I have much more to master. But together we’ve come up with a novel that readers seem to enjoy.

If we can do it, so can you — with the right help and the right publisher.

The Paragraph Ranch was published a few days ago by Booktrope Editions in Seattle. Our copies arrived this week, and it’s a thrill to hold the real book in our hands! As we move full-steam into promotions and publicity, we promise to share how it’s going, and how we did it. Follow us at the link on our blog page—and we’ll keep you posted.