Nuts & Bolts

Ask the Experts: There’s a Way To Become a Writer

By Martha Hullinger, WIW Member

So I was finally retired! And after many years of raising three children as a single parent, I had the time to read and read and read, something I’d loved to do growing up but hadn’t had much time for as an adult. I switched to library books after realizing that spending $150 or so to buy books every month was about to break my budget.

Three busy but fun years later, I realized that I had the time and opportunity to get back to writing, which I’d always loved to do too. I just needed some courses to fine tune what I was hoping was a natural, if untrained, talent. A long-time member of WIW, I called the office and the woman who was manning the desk recommended I seek out some courses through local organizations and community colleges to get me started. I discovered that Northern Virginia Community College has a continuing education program where new courses begin every month and last for six weeks, twice a week, sessions, all online.

In the past two years since I took that first course, I have taken at least one course at a time, sometimes even two or three. In that first month or two, I got three Letters to the Editor published, one in The Washington Post and two in The Washington Times. We were told in class that editors wouldn’t look at your work if you didn’t have writing credits, and since you couldn’t get writing credits unless they did look at your work, I started with unpaid opportunities. When the second year of courses began, I started getting published for actual money. Not a lot, but it was money that used to be someone else’s and was now mine; it was wonderfully fun to know that.

Also, during the second year, a fellow student recommended Auburn University as an alternative source of classes, the same www.ed2go.org courses I’d been taking. Since Auburn’s prices were lower, I switched there for the same course system. These classes were not for degree credit, but that didn’t matter to me because I wanted to be a freelance writer, and these courses were teaching me how.

For one of the courses I took early on, we students had an assignment of picking a subject and interviewing someone for the information we needed. I’m not the most outgoing person, but I read all the material on how to handle the interview and interviewed my artist sister in Madison, Wis. It was conducted over the telephone with a tape recorder picking up the speakerphone conversation. I approached the subject as though I were a prospective student of hers and created 20 questions about subjects I would want to know about if I became one of her students. All 20 questions interested me; we’d been told to make sure we didn’t ask questions we didn’t care about because the interviewee wouldn’t be likely to respond well and the article itself wouldn’t be likely to be interesting to readers either.

The interview lasted 70 minutes, an extended long-distance call, but was worth every dime of the cost because when I finally conquered my anxiety and wrote the article, it was published this summer in Mature Years, a Christian seniors’ magazine. One of the first instructors I had suggested I write an article, “Ten Tips for Parenting Adults,” since I’m a senior with grown children and grandchildren. That one will be published in the fall issue of Mature Years this year.

I’ve now taken most of the writing course that ed2go offers, including fiction, poetry, and article writing, as well as two workshops I found through Writer’s Digest. I’d like to take several of those courses again because the support and camaraderie that takes place during these courses are very helpful for motivation and self esteem. The instructors insist upon the doctrine of, “If you can’t think of anything nice to say about a fellow student’s work, don’t say anything at all.”

I’ve also heard about a writing prompt workshop that’s available and may sign up for it later. My interest was triggered by a 500-word prompt I wrote for one of the workshop sessions; the word prompt was ultimately submitted it to a publisher not long ago. Even if it never sells, it was lots of fun to write, and it inspired me to write a similar story, both of them funny and silly. The second one’s also out at a publisher right now.

I did my first writing assignment when I was nine years old, a poem for National Fire Prevention Week at school, and, since that time, I have actively sought out opportunities to write in many of different areas. When I was in my thirties, I wrote submission brochures describing the inventions handled by an invention marketing firm. I had no track record to justify being allowed to write them, but my supervisor let it happen. Much later I edited marketing proposals that were written by others for a property management firm and realized then that I not only like to do original writing but enjoy the editing process too.

So my bio today reads “Martha Hullinger, a retired executive assistant, set up her freelance writing business in the Spring of 2005.” I’d been waiting for that opportunity for a long time, and I found that if you want something enough and continue to work towards it, it really can happen.