How Did I Get Here?
The road has been twisty and “turny” and bumpy and rocky. That’s how!
The point of this separate blog is to keep a written record of my work on the book An Account of Her Own, but before I can do so correctly, there's a serious need to look back so you can know who I am and what I am about. And what the book is about. So, let's do this!
Grace:
I won't bore you with my CV/resume (you can find it over at my other website), but I need to at least semi bore you with a few highlights. My "career," if you will begins in 1999 when I attended classes at the community college (shoutout to BMCC). I eventually transferred to City College as a junior to study media and communications, and it was there that I began to dream big in terms of the future. Studying in the fantastic, beautiful buildings on campus def inspired your girl. My professors were highly supportive and confirmed what my mom had known since I was about six: I have what it takes to become a career writer.
So, what did I do with my degree? I went into…
…advertising! But (hear me out) it was at The Wall Street Journal. The day I went in for my interview, I will never forget the manager telling me that nobody she had ever heard of went from advertising to editorial, but she wasn't saying I couldn't, and 2.5 years later, I did. By then, I had applied to Columbia J school on a lark because I missed writing and news, and insanely enough, I got in. I did my schooling part-time and continued to work full time, and a contact I knew in editorial pounced and poached me to jump over during my first semester in the program.
After I graduated, I landed a job at Barron's, a sister publication of WSJ, and I spent five years covering investing, the stock market, and finance. I was a stranger in a strange land, but I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth. I spent those years studying the HELL out of my beat to get as good at covering it as I could. Then came my layoff and my decision to strike out on my own and freelance.
Le Book:
Join me in 2015, won't you?
It's July 1st, and it's also the 1st day of my layoff from Barron's. I'm picking up the pieces of my obliterated ego thanks to the amazing women in my life who’ve told me they'll hold my chin up for me since I can't. They tell me it is time to believe in myself and my skills and to create anything I want to career-wise. That THIS is some incredibly good fortune, this being dismissed.
Can I say that I didNOT believe a word they said at that time? I remember nodding along like: "Yeah, sure, you're insane," but the insane thing is that IT FREAKING WORKED. And that is how I become part of this book project. I freelanced a lot (lanced a lot, if you will) and the ability to do what I wanted for whom I so chose made me confident. I took assignments and projects that made me feel awesome instead of the daily grind. It rocked!
In 2016, a friend of a friend put out a call for female financial journalists to execute a project they were working on that pertained to a book about the Women's Bank in Denver. Said friend put my name in the ring and after a few conversations, I had way more understanding about what book packagers do (they hire brilliant writers to execute their brilliant ideas—but they have all the connections and the writer gets the byline—super cool right?) and an agent and what is called a deal memo.
I began preliminary research and even wrote a book proposal or two in 2017, but life got in the way. Horribly. I ended up putting everything on hiatus while the world greyed out, and I checked out. The other side of that coin came a few months later in the form of an offer to audit the book seminar at my alma mater, so I said "yes" and emerged from that semester back on campus a new person: ready to go, and ready to give it my all.
Last October, my uber patient agent and I submitted the book proposal to a whole host of publishing houses, and wouldn't you know it—someone TOTALLY wants to publish this thing! So, here I am on deadline for a book I am in love with. Final pages are due sometime next spring, and I have a LOT of work to do on this sweet thing. I think that massively-condensed word salad catches you up somewhat and semi answers the question about how I got here. I will draw portions of it out in later posts (lucky youse!)
Thanks for coming along, and I hope this wasn't too long of a read.
Xo, G