My Writing Journey
Part Two
CHAPTER TWO OF MY WRITING JOURNEY
If you read “In the Beginning of My Writing Journey,” you know that I was a young journalist all of my own accord. I learned to write in public school, and the natural outlet for my energies there was the school newspaper. “Chapter Two of My Writing Journey” spans the twenty years of learning and doing as a journalist.
In the ninth grade, I wrote an advice column for the school paper. Anonymously. It was great fun. The teacher mounted a locked drop-box in the hallway for students to leave questions for “Dear Fanny.” She collected them and I answered them in the monthly publication. I got questions about dating and making good grades. It created quite a buzz in school as only the newspaper advisor and staff knew the identity of “Miss Fanny,” and all were sworn to secrecy. I was unveiled in the paper at the end of the school year when it was time to move onto high school. No one had figured out that it was me. I (50 years later) ran into one of my ninth-grade teachers who told me she had no idea that I was the author of “Dear Fanny.”
I learned a lot in high school journalism class. Those lessons in deadlines, page layout, editing, revising, interviewing, and reporting still support me today as an author-preneur and literary citizen. Because my Dad and I loved sports, I requested to be the sports editor and was granted the position my junior year. I was the first female sports editor of a high school newspaper in West Virginia as certified by the state organization for school newspapers. My work on the page landed a “Best Sports Page” award, and it introduced me to working with the local newspaper staff.
The Parkersburg News and The Parkersburg Sentinel didn’t have enough dedicated high school sports reporters to cover all the games every weekend. They relied on the articles I and my staff wrote for the school paper, so I also learned how to keep statistics for baseball, basketball, and football. The coaches were helpful here and taught me how to record the stats during a game and the newspaper advisor showed me how to write them up in the articles. We didn’t have electronic submissions in those days. Typed everything up on an IBM Selectric electric typewriter, made copies, and I hand-delivered them to the local newsroom. I was 17 years old and to walk into a room full of desks, writers, and typewriters clacking away was the most thrilling day of the week for me. I wanted to be them.
College, marriage, children, teaching ballet, and writing ate up the next several years as I completed a journalism degree, the local paper hired me to write a weekly column for the lifestyle section, and I made my first pitch to a national trade magazine. Everything to date had been assigned. Editors at the papers had article ideas lined up and handed them out to the writers. I began to have ideas of my own for articles and that led to me learning how to pitch. The most nerve wracking way.
A little background is needed to explain why my first pitch was to a magazine devoted to dance teachers called “Dance Teacher Now.” My mother operated a dancing school where I learned discipline, determination, and physical fitness. We had a thriving business with multiple satellite locations in the area where our instructors taught everything from acrobatics to aerobic dancing. Mother learned how to apply for grants and brought dance teachers from all over the country to give master classes.
One of those teachers was a woman named Jo Anna Kneeland who was well-known in ballet circles and who had created a ground-breaking practice she called “The Therapeutic Barre” which was a series of exercises meant to strengthen and warm-up dancers, but it was also valuable as a recovery technique for dancers coming back from injury. She came to Parkersburg and taught therapeutic barre. It was an interesting mix of ballet and general stretching, and I could only find one dance publication in the world that had covered it almost 15 years earlier. My first pitch article formed in my mind.
We travelled to New York City on an annual basis to take dance classes and attend conferences. The brand-new magazine “Dance Teacher Now” (which is now Dance Teacher) advertised that it would be a conference vendor, and the publisher would be in attendance to solicit subscribers. “Here goes nothing,” I said to myself a hundred times. The publisher wasn’t taking pitches, but I gave her one anyway about “The Therapeutic Barre” with permission from Jo Anna Kneeland, ballet mistress of the famed Harkness Ballet Company.
My teeth were shaking so hard from nerves that I remember biting my tongue while making the pitch. I literally tasted blood while making my first pitch to an editor live and in person.
Sold.
Next, how I managed a family, writing, and teaching and how those years put me on the springboard to what would become my lifelong author platform.
Thanks for reading.
How is your writing journey going? I would love to know.
Be well, write well,
Joy
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JOY E. HELD is an author, educator, editor, entrepreneur, and literary citizen responsible for this site and its contents. She is the author of
Writer Wellness: A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity (Headline Books, Inc., 2020)
Writer Wellness Workbook: A Guided Workbook and Journal to Accompany Writer Wellness: A Writer’s Path to Health and Creativity (Headline Books, Inc., 2023)
The Mermaid Riot (Melange, 2024) Young Adult Historical Fantasy
She writes spicy historical fiction under a pen name.
She is the winner of multiple writing and book awards:
West Virginia Writers, Inc. Annual Writing Contest, Honorable Mention, Novel, 1998.
New York Book Festival, Honorable Mention, Writer Wellness, 2020.
Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Finalist, Writer Wellness, 2021.
Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America, Member of the Year, 2020.
Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America, First Book Award, 2020.
She is an adjunct faculty member in the Southern New Hampshire University Online MFA Creative Writing.
She is a proud graduate of Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA with an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction.
She is a member of The Authors Guild and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.
Joy is the founder and CEO of My WRITEDAY Subscription Box for writers and readers.
That is so interesting that you ghost wrote an advice column! My protagonist in IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN YOU also ghost wrote an advice column for her high school newspaper. I loved writing her responses to various questions! I was also fascinated that you mentioned DANCE TEACHER NOW. My first published article appeared in the magazine, "Life in the Minor Leagues of Dance." Anyhow, I loved reading about your journey, Joy, and I look forward to the next installment!
Loved this story, Joy!
Best,
David Yale