Happy Writing Anniversary to Me

Ten years ago today, my first cover story appeared. It was my first “pro credit” — a long profile in my hometown’s alternative weekly of romance author Julie Leto, who has become, in the last decade, a mentor, a colleague, and one of my closest friends.

Here is the story. It’s called “My Randy Valentine.” Then, as now, authors don’t get a lot of say in their titles.

I had written a few several-line movie reviews for the newspaper the summer I graduated from college, and one food review, for which I was paid the cost of the dinner. But this was the first time I got a check.

For this article, I was paid $500. It was, to a girl answering phones at an insurance company and working nights at Pottery Barn in Manhattan in order to afford the rent on the crappy Queen’s apartment I shared with two roommates, an outrageous windfall. I remember the day the story came out. I waltzed into a salon in Astoria with hair that went all the way down my back and told the owner that I was a writer, and I wanted a more “rock star” haircut. An hour later I had this awesome, razory short style that I wore for many years.

My parents had the issue of the newspaper framed for me. I went out and drank wine with friends. I was a writer! I was paid for writing!

And since the place I was being paid to write was in Tampa, not New York, I decided to get out of that town. In New York, I met a lot of people who had come to be writers/artists/actors but had been beat down by the system. I lost count of the number of times I’d said to a new acquaintance, “I work at [insurance company] but I’m working on a novel,” and they’d give me a sad, knowing smile and go, “Yeah, I used to do that, but I got tired of being poor.” I dreaded coming to the same conclusion. (Ironically, now most of the people I know in NY are full time writers, but I never met any of them then.)

A month later, I lost my job. I made an attempt to find a new one. I thought it would be good if I tried to find a job in publishing. But jobs were really scarce in NYC post-9/11, and it got even tougher when they stopped accepting “unknown mail” due to an Anthrax scare. Once, I tried to drop off a resume in person at the Harlequin offices, and they kicked me out. After about a month of that, I decided to leave. It was very telling that most of my boxes in my bedroom had remained packed.

I went to Florida, where I promptly picked up a regular freelance gig at the newspaper that first published me. I started waitressing to make extra cash. I lived with my parents. I finished my first manuscript and, as a reward (and thanks to Julie’s urging), I joined RWA. I finished another manuscript. I started submitting and collecting rejections. By 2003, I was working full time for the paper and living in an off-season vacation cottage on a beach in Sarasota.

The questions I got from acquaintances in Florida were, “If you want to be a writer, why don’t you go to new York?” The answer of, “because the newspaper that’s paying me is here” didn’t seem to sway them, nor did, “You mean like Hemingway?”

I spent most of 2003 like this, and then I went to Australia and New Zealand with Sailor Boy on an epic antipodean adventure (and yes, it took me until 2012 to publish anything set there. Sometimes things take time to marinate). While overseas, I finished my third manuscript. When we came back, in spring of 2004, I started freelancing for the paper again, but things there had changed significantly and bizarrely, and I knew I had to get out. I just didn’t know where to go. I wasn’t making enough to live on, and newspapers were cutting staff, not adding them. As a good half-dozen hurricanes rocked my state, I took another job doing clean up and concentrated on my fiction (still doing my weekly freelancing gig). I got my first revision requests, contest wins, and agent interaction. Also, a lot more rejections.

In January of 2005, Sailor Boy and I moved to Washington, DC. As I was packing, I got the idea for Secret Society Girl. When I got there, I started looking for a job, and writing my books on the side. I almost took a job as a night desk editor at the Post. Boy, that would have been hell. I am NOT a night person. Instead, I took a job as a copyeditor at a science journal. It was a scary time. I was still in publishing, but for the first time since February of 2002, I wasn’t writing for pay. And no matter how hard I was trying with my new manuscript, no matter that I had others still circulating publishing houses, there was no guarantee that I’d ever make money writing again. That was March of 2005.

One week later, I had an agent. A few weeks after that, I had a book deal for more money than I’d ever made at any job.

Since 2005, I’ve been making my living as a writer. Since April of 2006, I’ve been doing it full time. This summer will see the release of my eighth novel. It’s funny to think about how in my adult life, I’ve been doing this longer than anything else. Since April of 2006, I’ve had a date in mind where if I didn’t sell something new, I’d have to go out and get a job, just as I got odd jobs every other time my writing income fell short in the past decade. With every contract, I’ve been able to push that date forward. I haven’t needed it in almost six years.

But it all started in February of 2002, with one little newspaper, and one cover story, and one check that was so much more than $500 — it was actual, spendable money that someone gave me for putting a bunch of words on paper, and it was the first time that ever happened. Happy anniversary, little article. Happy anniversary to both of us.