I became the Editor-in-Chief of my college newspaper. I received my degree in Journalism from Immaculata College in Washington, DC – which no longer exists. (Neither does my high school.)
In 1980, after ten years of marriage and with four sons under eight years of age, I started my career as a published writer. Getting paid at last.
I've
been a writer since I was in first grade, when I was able to put sentences
together on paper. There was something about the unlimited horizon words
presented that captured my imagination and opened up a new world to me.
I gobbled vocabulary and spelling like the greedy creative embryo I was,
and I have never stopped loving language.
I was that skinny, geeky little girl in the class who couldn't wait to get my hands on the list of titles or topics the teacher would hand out for English compositions. To me, it was like a box of chocolates... which to choose? I started getting gold stars and A's on those paragraphs, and I was hooked. My first by-lines!
And so it went. By the time I was 14, I started winning awards for my writing.At my all-girls high school, I was a member of a unique yearbook that was produced in quarterly issues like a magazine, which were collected and bound as a book at the end of the school year. We competed in the annual Press Day at St. Bonaventure University, where I won my first writing awards for a short story, a column, and editorials. The New York Times sponsored these awards. I was chosen as Literary Editor in junior year (a precedent), and became Editor-in-Chief as a senior, where I created a completely new look for the yearbook. I wrote most of the copy, as well as a humor column. We took the top honor in the state at Press Day for excellence. For an 18-year-old writer, this was The Big Time.
There were the long hours on my own, writing stories,
plays, essays, letters, poems, and diaries... I wrote and illustrated
my first novel at 10 years old, and I can still remember the plot line.
I was a humor "gossip columnist" for an underground paper my friends
and I put out at the aforementioned all-girls (did I say Catholic?) high school.
If there was an opportunity to write, I was there.
I've been a contributing feature writer and essayist in Gannett's Rochester Democrat & Chronicle's former Sunday Upstate Magazine; Rochester Women (1980s’), Golf Digest, GOLF Magazine, Success, Jacksonville Today, SCORE, Genesee Country Magazine, and Business Strategies. I write guest essays published in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and in the Daily Messenger in Canandaigua, New York. I've finished my first novel, and I'm working on a book proposal for a non-fiction motivational book.
I'm a member of Writers and Books in Rochester, one of the premier literary organizations in the country, and sometimes take workshops there. I've been a participant in writing workshops at the University of Rochester, Nazareth College, and Writers and Books, all on Fiction.
Today I've achieved my dream of being a working writer
and independent creative developer, making a full-time living from my
work. Only a tiny percent of writers in the USA are able to do this.
My “personal bests” include a national cover story on Jack
Nicklaus’ business life for Success Magazine, which Nicklaus
reprinted for his marketing package; and working as a partial ghostwriter
and editor for a client in Washington, DC, a former CIA officer, on a
novel about CIA training and the roots of terrorism at the end of the
Cold War. My greatest success is in doing what I love, with great people
I enjoy.