For the past six years I have taught autobiographical writing at Santa Rosa Junior College, in California. Throughout these years I have enjoyed seeing my students light up as they become engrossed in their family stories about real people in harmony and conflict.


How I Became a Writer

    I performed capably in school English classes, but I was eight years out of college before I began to see my writing as having a purpose besides informing my parents that I was alive and well in Munich or Bangkok or Kathmandhu.

    Then one day in 1977, near Florence, Italy, I had a sudden, inexplicable urge to relate an experience I'd had three years earlier in Meshad, Iran. Two Iranian rug merchants had plied my friend Tim and me with lunch and adulterated tea, and sold us two carpets (which we still share today). It was a story that had to be told.

    I bought a notebook and planted myself in the stands of an abandoned soccer stadium, and wrote. It was harder than I thought, but five hours later, I had a 1,500-word rough draft. A week later I had a 1,000-word third draft.

    We continued to travel south through Greece and Israel, and I kept writing. When we returned home to Forestville, California, to our rented cabin in the redwoods, I converted an alcove into a work area. And I wrote.

    When the Santa Rosa teachers went on strike and I could no longer substitute teach without being tagged a scab, I lost half of my income for six weeks, but I still kept writing.

    After three years I had completed (a dicey word in this profession) a novel and a long nonfiction piece, Dress Blues and Tennis Shoes, about umpiring baseball in the Texas League while traveling through the South with fellow umpire Charlie Williams, a black man. Although I didn't know it then, I had written a memoir.

    I signed with a New York agent who agreed to try to sell both manuscripts. He eventually failed, but it wasn't his fault. My work failed because it wasn't ready. I had received solid editing advice and grown as a writer, yet I resented some of the criticism I received. I had the wrong attitude.

    One tip I did embrace was "Don't sit by the mailbox; go on to the next project." As soon as I sent off my umpiring manuscript, I began scouting for a new idea. It came to me one day when I was watching a movie called "Heart Like a Wheel." It's the story of Shirley "Cha Cha" Muldowny, who became world-champion as a Top Fuel race-car driver. The film elicited two questions from me: 1) Why does someone go into such an off-beat sport? and 2) What skills are necessary to become the best?

    Armed with those two questions and what I hoped was a winning personality, I set out to interview the best athletes in unsung sports. The result, a year later, was my first book RISK! Profiles of Athletes on the Edge. The book was written on speculation—that is, I put in the work without any assurance that I would ever find a publisher. I did the writing work first because, I figured, it would make it easier for an unpublished writer to get into print, and because it was great fun traveling around the country talking to world-class athletes.

    Before I could prepare a proposal for my agent, I met the owner of a small press in Berkeley, who agreed to co-publish RISK! with me. He would take care of the cover, layout, and printing. I had to pay the production costs—$8,000—and find a way to market it. I put up the money and began to sell my book—to friends and acquaintances, to distributers and wholesalers, to bookstores and specialty shops. In the end, I made only slightly less money than I would have made working at Burger King.

    But I had a book, something to show publishers, a springboard, I hoped, to further publishing ventures.

    I pitched the idea of doing a women's version of RISK! to Stackpole Books, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They liked my work, but had a different idea. They signed me to write a series of three books on Adventure Athletes, called Climbers, Runners & Walkers, and Cyclists.

    I worked with Stackpole for the next eight years, cranking out twelve books. Meanwhile, I was selling some of my profiles to magazines. I was, not so suddenly, a professional writer.

    Of course, in this business, the struggle never ends. Even today, my agent and I still have to work hard to sell the next project, with no guarantee of success.

    Today I go where the work is. I've done business writing, legal writing, ghostwriting, magazine writing, and book writing—just about everything except write a screenplay. My home workroom, a truly inspirational place to work, is nestled among a dozen towering redwood trees; I love waking up early, when the rest of my time zone is still asleep, and feeling gripped by my current writing project.

    People ask what lessons I've learned from my writing life. Well, I've learned many, most of which I'll pass on to you at this site. But one lesson may be the most important of all, and this is it: IT'S THE WRITING THAT COUNTS. Doing work that we love is what enriches our lives. Wealth and fame may be attractions, but it is the joy of work, the quiet exultation that comes from crafting a winning metaphor or a gripping lead, that keeps us coming back for more.

    For me, it's the secret of life.