Writers of all Kinds

Yesterday, I had lunch with a very good friend of mine. In addition to a busy career as a marketing consultant, she’s also a writer, doing both short stories and articles. With many years of experience in the marketing field, including as vice president of a nationally known advertising firm, she could easily write the book on marketing. But it seems the articles she likes to write focus on the individuals, the human interest aspect of whatever the subject. She was telling me about a great idea she has for an article. She’s currently researching and putting it together. I won’t say the subject here, though. She’s already targeted a local magazine and at least one national magazine to pitch to.

Listening to her, I was thinking, wow, it’s sort of scary to do all that work, then pitch the idea, only to have it possibly turned down. Then, of course, I thought, duh, that’s exactly what novelists do, only they write out the entire three to four hundred pages. Both types of writing involve a lot of research, planning and sweat. And both can suffer rejection.

It seems that no matter what kind of writing you do, a writer has to be organized, committed, passionate, skilled and thick skinned. Definitely thick skinned.