Author Archives: Maria Langer

Check Out the View

Posted on by
4

Can you still say you’d rather take a tour in an airplane?

Just thought I’d take a moment to share this photo with blog readers. It was taken by Bryan using my Nikon D80 and 10.5mm fisheye lens. He was sitting in the back seat; I was sitting up front with Ryan at the controls. Bryan snapped this shot from between the two seats as we were flying over Lake Shasta in northern California.

Over Lake Shasta

Yes, I know we look a bit distorted. That’s the lens in action. But can you get an idea of the view? Huge front bubble window, big side windows. Even the back seats have a great view.

Yet people still take tours of places like the Grand Canyon in airplanes, where they’re lucky to get a limited view out one window.

Go figure.

Cross-Country by Helicopter: E25 to BFI

Posted on by
9

14.4 Hours over four states.

Cross-Country, Defined
For those of you who are not pilots, allow me to explain the term cross-country as used by a pilot. A cross-country flight is basically any long flight with a landing a certain minimum distance from your starting point. For airplane pilots, it’s at least 50 miles. For helicopter pilots, it’s at least 25 miles. So while this blog entry discusses a very long cross-country flight, we did not fly all the way across the country.

This past Thursday and Friday, I flew by helicopter with two other helicopter pilots, Ryan and Bryan, from Wickenburg, AZ to Boeing Field in Seattle. Bryan and Ryan did just about all of the flying. I sat up front being a nervous passenger when we were near the ground and playing with the radio and GPS. Brian let me make most of his radio calls on the first day, but I didn’t get to do much of that the second day.

It was a mutually beneficial journey. I needed to get the helicopter from Arizona to Washington State. Ryan and Bryan were both CFIs who wanted to build time in an R44 helicopter. It was way cheaper for them to fly with me on this trip than to rent an R44 from a flight school. There was also the added experience of planning and executing a flight through unknown terrain, with fuel stops and an overnight stop along the way. And the money they paid to fly my aircraft helped me cover the cost of this very long and very expensive helicopter flight. Win-win.

Corona Fuel

A very cool but very helicopter-unfriendly fuel island at Corona Airport in California.

Our flight path took us west, with Bryan at the controls, along state route 60 to I-10, across the Colorado River, and then along I-10 through Bythe, Chiriaco Summit, Palm Springs, and Banning; then back on 60 past March to Riverside on the 91. We stopped at Corona for fuel at what’s likely the coolest but most helicopter-unfriendly fuel island in the world. (We didn’t notice the separate fuel island more suitable for helicopters until we’d stopped and shut down.)

Here’s a video of our transition along the California coast through the LAX airspace on the Shoreline transition route. You might want to turn down the sound while playing it; lots of helicopter noise.

Then Ryan took us west on 91 through the airspace for Fullerton and Long Beach, with a Torrance low pass. (Robinson has entirely too many helicopters waiting for owners on its ramp and in its delivery room.) He then got clearance for the Shoreline helicopter transition of LAX space, which requires the pilot to drop to 150 feet 1/4 mile offshore to pass under LAX departing traffic. We continued following the coast up past Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Oxnard, Ventura, and Santa Barbara. By then, the marine layer was moving in, so we went inland for a bit. Eventually, we reached San Luis Obispo (and the chatty controller) and stopped for fuel and lunch.

Ryan at San Luis Obispo

Here’s Ryan on the ramp at San Luis Obispo before departure northbound. I shot this one with my Blackberry’s camera, so pardon the quality.

Bryan was back at the controls for our departure northbound. After a very close call with a large bird, we followed the path of Route 101 northbound. Most of the route was up a riverbed in a very pleasant valley. We got to Salinas and realized that any coastal route would be out of the question — the marine layer was creeping in even there. So we headed over the mountains, eventually ending up in the western part of California’s Central Valley. We stopped for fuel at Byron.

Ryan took over and we continued north over Rio Vista and Yolo, finally hooking up with I-5. We followed that through endless farmland — much of it flooded for a crop that apparently needs lots of water — over Willows Glen and Red Bluff, with more than a few crop-dusters flying nearby at altitudes far below ours. We stopped for the night at Redding, tied down the helicopter, and got a hotel shuttle into town.

We’d flown 8.8 hours.

Ryan Flying Near Mt. Shasta

Ryan at the controls as we near Mt. Shasta in northern California.

The next morning, we were back at the airport at 9 AM, preflighting and getting ready to go. Ryan would start the flight. We headed north along I-5, over Lake Shasta and past Mount Shasta, which was snow-covered and beautiful. We were now past Central Valley’s vast farmland and up in the mountains. We flew past Weed, Siskiyou Co., Rogue Valley/Medford, and Grant’s Pass. Much of this flying was in canyons, along the same route as I-5 and a train line.

Things turned a bit iffy as I-5 swung to the east. We were hoping to go north and catch it on the other side of some mountains, shortening our route a bit, but clouds sitting on the tops of those mountains made that a bit uncertain. So we dropped altitude, slowed down, and followed I-5. Ryan flew while Bryan and I kept a sharp lookout for the power lines we knew — from both chart and GPS — were ahead. We weren’t that low and there wasn’t any real danger, but we were certainly not coming out of that canyon anywhere except the I-5 corridor. We passed the powerlines with plenty of room. The road descended into a valley and we stayed up beneath the cloud bottoms. Eventually, the sky cleared. We continued along I-5 past Myrtle Creek and Roseburg and stopped at Cottage Grove State for fuel and lunch.

Then it was Bryan’s turn again. We continued up I-5 past Hobby, Albany Municipal, and McNary. Then we headed northwest over Sportsman’s, Hillsboro, and Scappoose. We crossed the Columbia River and headed north on I-5 again over Kelso Longview and Olympia, with nice views of Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier in the distance. Then on to Bremmerton, where we stopped for fuel. We probably had enough to make the last 20 minutes, but why take chances?

At BFI

Zero-Mike-Lima on the ramp at BFI. Another Blackberry photo. And yes, that’s Mt. Rainier in the background.

I flew the last leg with Bryan up front to handle the radio and give me directions. It was only a 15-minute flight, but the airspace was complicated, so I was grateful for the help. I set the helicopter down sloppily in the parking area. We’d flown a total of 14.4 hours.

It was a great flight. We saw so much that most of it is just a blur in my mind. With luck, these photos and videos will help me remember the trip for a long time to come.

Many thanks to Ryan and Bryan for accompanying me on this trip. I hope they learned a lot about cross-country flying.

Real Life Helicopters: Wildlife Survey Flight

Posted on by
Comment

How I spent yesterday morning.

At 5 AM yesterday morning, I was at Wickenburg Airport (E25), filling two 5.5-gallon plastic fuel cans with 100LL. I had already topped off the helicopter’s tanks and it was sitting on the ramp, waiting for me in the predawn darkness. I was scheduled to do a wildlife survey in northern Arizona at 6:30. I’d have to pick up my passenger at Williams, AZ (KCMR), an hour away by helicopter. There was no fuel at Williams, and the closest fuel stop to Williams and our survey area was 20 NM north at Valle (40G). The FBO didn’t open until 8 AM, so I wouldn’t be able to get fuel before then. The survey area was 40 NM from fuel at Valle. I wanted my client to get as much air time as possible before our first refueling stop, so I figured I’d put the 11 gallons of 100LL that I carried with me into the tanks when I arrived in Williams.

So that explains why I was at the self-serve island, filling two plastic gas cans before dawn.

A while later, I was airborne, heading north to Williams. The two gas cans were strapped into the back passenger seats. They were good cans and wouldn’t leak on my leather seats. On board was an overnight bag, in case the job went two days, a 6-pack cooler full of bottled water, and the usual survival gear. I was listening to Steely Dan on my iPod as the sun rose at my 2 o’clock position. Moments later, I crossed the ridge east of Antelope Peak, clearing it by a mere 100 feet. From there, I sped north at 110 knots airspeed to get to Williams as quickly as possible.

At Williams, AZ

I had a tail wind and the wind was blowing pretty good at Williams. 210 at 9 gusting to 18 is what the AWOS reported. There was no one in the pattern. There never is at Williams. I made all my calls, then came around from the north to land into the wind on the big, empty ramp.

The terminal, which is very nice but completely underutilized, was unlocked. “Out of Service” signs appeared on both restrooms and the water fountain. I peeked into a stall in the Ladies room. There was water in the toilet bowl. That meant it would flush, even if it didn’t refill. I had to go so I took my chances. It worked fine. That made me wonder why the signs were there.

I was topping off the tanks with those two cans of fuel when my passenger arrived. He showed me maps and we made a plan. The main part of the job was to fly down the side of a 1,000-foot cliff face, 50 to 200 feet off the top, depending on where the rock ledges were. The cliff ran north to south. The wind was coming out of the south. Although my client suggested starting from the south, I pointed out that if we started from the north, the cliff face would be on his side of the aircraft and I’d be able to fly into the wind. That would make things easier all around. He agreed.

I added some oil, burning my fingers on the hot dip stick. We climbed in, I started up, and we took off, into the wind. A westerly heading put us on course for the survey area.

It was about a 30-minute flight. We chatted about this and that. My client was a youngish guy — certainly younger than me — and had spent more than 200 hours in airplanes and 20 hours in helicopters doing surveys like the one we were doing. As the morning wore on, he’d share a lot of his knowledge about raptors — specifically red-tailed hawks and golden eagles — with me.

The Survey

Cliffs
Satellite view of the cliff face we flew down.

We reached the survey area and I geared my mind down from 110-knot flight through 60-knots and finally down to about 20-knots. We’d survey the cliff face at this slow speed, about 50 to 100 feet away from the rock wall.

While this sounds very dangerous, it really wasn’t bad at all. Although it had been windy at Williams, it wasn’t very windy along the cliff. That might be because the wind was coming from the southeast and the tilted mesa beyond the cliff was blocking the wind, or, more likely, it simply might not have been as windy this far west. So It wasn’t as if I had to fight the wind. Flying was easy.

There were just two of us on board, so I had plenty of power, even though I was flying at about 7,000 feet MSL. I was even able to bring the helicopter into a rock, solid out-of-ground-effect hover a few times as needed.

Best of all, if I had any kind of problem — loss of tail rotor effectiveness (LTE), settling with power, engine failure — I could easily build speed by pulling away from the cliff face to my right, where a huge, open, flat valley offered unlimited landing zones at least 500 feet below us.

Frankly, I couldn’t have asked for a better setup for this kind of work. It gave me an opportunity to practice simple flying skills — especially OGE hovering and sideways flight — without having to battle the wind or worry about escape routes.

It took at least an hour to travel down the cliff face from north to south. There was a radar dome at the very south end and we could clearly hear it in our headsets, the closer we got to it. By the time we were within 1/4 mile, the sound was very annoying. I dropped beneath it to round the end of the mesa and it silenced. I realized that this was what “below the radar” really meant.

On the other side, we followed the edge of the mesa, which wasn’t nearly as well defined, north. Again, there wasn’t much wind. There also wasn’t much wildlife to survey. We popped over the top of the mesa and began following small canyons on its east side. We were looking for raptor nests. We’d found some on the cliff face, but they could also be in tall trees.

The mesa-top stuff was low-level — probably 50 to 100 feet AGL — at 30 to 60 knots airspeed. This is considerably more dangerous than the cliff face work we did earlier. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to recover from a settling with power or engine failure incident at that low airspeed/altitude combination. One of the reasons I got the job to work for this client is that I was willing to do this kind of flying. The first company they called — a flight school — refused to let its pilots fly like this. I’m willing to take this risk, so their loss is my gain.

At one point, I landed in a wide canyon so I could strip off my outer shirt. It was getting hot in the cockpit, flying so slowly with the sun shining in. We also dipped in the cooler for cold water. I didn’t bother shutting down. It was a 5 minute break and we got right back to business when we were done.

We’d flown for 2 hours from Williams when I decided it was time to go back for fuel. We traced a route northward to the edge of the survey area, then cut east to Valle. I used my GPS to pick the most direct route. There wasn’t much of interest along the way. Northern Arizona has lots of high desert plateau areas that are covered with dried grasses and a sprinkling of trees.

It took about 25 miles to get to Valle. We had a tail wind.

At Valle

Valle Airport is about 25 miles south of the Grand Canyon. I won’t pretend to know its history. I do know, however, that it’s home of the Planes of Fame Museum, which is an excellent little warbird museum. And I know that the lobby of the airport terminal is absolutely crammed with antique cars and trucks in museum quality condition.

And there were no “Out of Service” signs on the rest rooms.

The FBO guy filled the helicopter tanks and the two fuel cans. The idea with the cans was that if I flew too long on the survey and we couldn’t make it all the way back to Valle to get fuel, I could always land out in the desert, shut down, and add the 11 gallons. That would get me another 40 minutes of flight time, which was enough to reach any number of fueling locations.

I paid for the fuel and we went back outside. The FBO guy had managed to drench the fuel cans with fuel, so I had to dry them off and close them tightly before I could load them back in. I put shop towels under them to protect the seats. Still, one of them leaked a tiny bit during the flight that followed — not enough to do any damage, but enough for me to catch the occasional smell of 100LL.

We headed west again. It took nearly 35 minutes to reach the survey area. We had a head wind.

More Survey Stuff and the Flight Home

We spent the next two hours inching our way along the same cliff face. The light was better now and we spotted another nest. We also did another nearby cliff face and spent a bunch of time zigzagging along the mesa top. We found three more nests up there. The wind had also picked up, so the flying was a bit more challenging. But I’ve flown worse.

Then we headed south to check another area. We found an active prairie dog village there.

And then we were done.

I dropped my passenger off without shutting down. It was 85 NM back to Wickenburg from that point and my goal was to get there without having to detour for fuel or stop to tap into that 11 gallons on board. I bee-lined it, cruising at my best range speed of 100 knots.

For a while, as I flew over empty desert, I thought I might not make it. I considered the kind of place I could land and refuel without bothering anyone. There was no airport on or near my flight path. There wasn’t much of anything other than small mountain ranges, canyons, and rocky outcroppings. I passed over only 3 paved roads.

Then I was 15 miles north of Wickenburg, with about 8 gallons of fuel on board. No problem.

I landed and shut down. It was 95°F on the ramp. I put the helicopter away.

I’d flown 6.5 revenue hours and had learned a hell of a lot about birds.

Always Link to the Source

Posted on by
5

The author deserves it.

The other day, I read an excellent post by journalist Dan Tynan titled “My Job and welcome to it.” If you are a journalist, blogger, or other type of writer — or have dreams of becoming any of these things — I highly recommend that you read this. It might open up your eyes about how a professional writer works and how the decline in print journalism is affecting them. Many thanks to @estherschindler on Twitter for including this link among the dozens she tweets each day.

In it, he laments about the way his work is echoed on the Web:

And, of course, the blogosphere may pick it up. Kind-hearted conscientious bloggers will write a one paragraph summary and link to the story, citing the source where they found it (though not necessarily the original source). Some will add their own commentary or expertise, though this is pretty rare. Others will lift the story wholesale, but retain my byline and some notion of where they originally found the story. And some evil bloggers will lift the content and claim it as their own, the bastards.

From all of this I get exactly bupkis. Oh, there’s added exposure I suppose. I do always put a link to my own blog (Tynan on Tech) in the bio, and sometimes I see a small traffic spike. But really, the benefit to me personally is next to nil.

I added the emphasis in the first paragraph. It’s the point of this post: that too many bloggers and online content creators are linking back to their sources — but not necessarily the original source.

I see this on Twitter all the time. The Huffington Post, which apparently regurgitates top news and opinion items with a blurb and a quote — sometimes quite lengthy, going beyond what’s considered “fair use” — is frequently linked to from Twitter, Digg, and other sites. The only organization that benefits from this is the one that echoes the content — in this case, The Huffington Post — not the author of the original work or the organization that paid for the work to be written. The result of this is a potential loss of credit and advertising revenue for the true source. People read the meat of the content on the aggregating site, and don’t bother to dig deeper at the source. This not only contributes to the problems we’re having in the world of journalism, but it feeds the “think for me” attitude of so many people who are trying to consume the information that’s out there. After all, why should I read an entire article and form my own opinion when an organization like The Huffington Post can deliver the highlights and opinion for me?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not bashing The Huffington Post. It does serve a purpose. What I am criticizing, however, is the inability of people to recognize the source of someone’s hard work and to share a link to that source rather than to the regurgitated version on another site.

Oddly enough, another link shared on Twitter soon after the link referenced (and properly linked to) above rammed this point home — at least in my mind. It was a link to an article by Mack Collier titled “Five reasons you have a crappy blog.” I read the article, which I found interesting, and was surprised to find a statement buried at the bottom of it that said:

Mack Collier blogs at The Viral Garden. His original post ran here.

I clicked the link on the word “here” and wound up at Mack’s blog, where the exact same post appeared, but with the title “Five reasons why your company blog sucks.” (I guess the word “sucks” was too outrageous for the other site.)

This worried me. Had the other site, the one my Twitter friend linked to, stolen the content from Mack? I went so far as to fire off an e-mail message to him, apologizing for my snoopiness and asking whether he’d given the other site permission. He wrote back promptly, assuring me that he had.

Whew.

Content theft is a major concern of all writers and bloggers. I’ve seen other sites steal content from newspapers and other bloggers and I’m always aware of when it may be happening again.

My point is this: if you’re going to share a link to content with someone, share a link to the original source. (Yes, “original source” is redundant, but I think redundancy is required here.) The same article — or a good portion of its content — might appear multiple times on the Web. The original author deserves to have his work written where it appeared first. This helps him gauge the popularity of a post or topic. It helps concentrate all comments related to the post in one place. If he’s been paid by the source site to write the content, it helps earn him points with the publisher that’ll get him more work in the future or increase his level of compensation. It could also help with advertising revenues if you click an ad on the site.

And you can bet that when I tweeted the link, I used Mack’s site as the source.

Writing Tips: Making the Switch to a Writing Career

Posted on by
2

Advice from the trenches.

Nineteen years ago, I left my full-time job as a Senior Financial Analyst for a Fortune 100 corporation to begin a career as a freelance writer.

Some Ancient History

The job I left was a good job. I was in my late 20s, bringing in more than $45K a year. In 1990, that was a pretty good salary. I’d been with the company for two and a half years after five years with the New York City Comptroller’s Office and was on the fast track for upper financial management. If I’d stuck around, I probably would have doubled my salary in two to three years.

But although I was good at what I did and I didn’t mind the work, it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t want to be just another corporate grunt, working 40 to 60 hours a week in an office park 30 miles from home, living for weekends and vacation time. I was tired of wearing suits and heels and pretending that the work I did was important or even meaningful. I was a number cruncher, drawing the conclusions my bosses wanted from numbers we couldn’t change. It was bullshit.

I’d gotten to where I was by going to college — I was the first one in my family to do so — and getting a BBA in accounting. I liked working with numbers and I was good at it. When you’re starting college at 17, what do you know about life or careers? I came from a lower middle class family and all I knew is that I didn’t want to be poor. Accountants made a lot of money, I liked working with numbers. It seemed like the right answer.

Until I got into my junior year at college. That’s when I started to realize that what I did in college would determine what I did for a living when I finished. And I didn’t want to be an accountant. I wanted to be a writer.

I remember calling up my mother and telling her that I wanted to change my major to journalism. I remember her freaking out, telling me I’d never make a living as a writer, that I’d starve. She wanted me to become a CPA. She, like so many mothers out there, wanted her children to succeed in careers she could brag about. “My daughter is a CPA” sounds a lot better than “My daughter is a reporter for Newsday.” (Newsday was the daily newspaper out on Long Island in New York, where we lived at the time.) That’s not to say I planned to write for Newsday, but it was probably what she was thinking.

So I backed down and stuck with accounting. It was a decision I’ve regretted for nearly 30 years.

It was also the last time I listened to my mother.

As you might imagine, in May of 1990, when I called my mother to tell her I was leaving my secure, high-paying job to become a freelance writer, she freaked out. But there really wasn’t anything she could say to stop me.

Don’t Leap before You Look

Now those of you who are reading this might think I was very brave to take this rash step. But it wasn’t rash. It was well thought out and executed.

You see, I didn’t just throw away a career and start scrambling for work. I already had a project lined up. A company I’d done some part-time training for wanted a five day computer course about using computers for auditing. Computers were relatively new at the time and laptops were cutting edge technology. Some of the better funded corporate internal auditing departments — including the one I’d spent two years in — were buying laptops for their staff. The training organization saw a market for a course written by a computer “expert” with a background in auditing. Someone with writing skills. Me.

The course paid $10,000. It wasn’t something I could work on while continuing my full-time job — it was just too intense. My boss wouldn’t give me a leave of absence, so I quit. Simple as that.

But $10,000 certainly wasn’t enough to live on, so I needed to line up other work. I got a job as a per diem instructor for a computer training organization. They called me in when they needed me and paid me by the day. Some weeks I’d get just one day of work. Other weeks I’d get four days. They tried to hire me as a full-timer, but I wanted no part of that.

As I worked on the auditing with computers course and did some per-diem training, I started networking. I got other, better paying contract computer work. I sent out queries and book proposals. I got an assignment as a ghost writer for four chapters of a computer book. I built a relationship with one of the co-authors of that book. Together, we sold another book to another publisher. I sent out other proposals on my own. I got my first solo book contract. I got assignments from computer magazines. I got my own column in one.

All this happened over a period of three years. By then, I was securely entrenched in my new career as a computer how-to writer and trainer. Within two more years of hard work, publishers were coming to me, offering me books.

The point is, I didn’t jump ship without a solid plan that would keep me earning money while I could build my writing career.

I think I was smart. And I think some other people are dumb.

Like my old friend Mary (not her real name). I wrote about her once before in this blog. She always wanted to be a novelist and one day she decided her full-time job was holding her back from succeeding. She quit and spent her days in her apartment, supposedly writing. A year later, she was out of money and deep in debt with her family. Her novel wasn’t done, either. She was forced to go back to work. To my knowledge, she still hasn’t had a novel published.

That’s the dumb way of starting a career as a writer.

Take Things Seriously

I think Mary’s story is a good example of someone who simply isn’t taking a writing career seriously. Unless you’re independently wealthy or have the financial support of someone with a lot of patience, you can’t just throw away a real job to try your hand at writing.

And yes, I did just say “real job.” A real job is a job that pays you money. When I left my real job, I had two other real jobs lined up: the big writing project and the computer training work. Mary had nothing lined up. She just had a vague idea about writing a novel. She didn’t even have any ideas about who would publish it. And in case you don’t realize it, it’s tough to make s living as a novelist unless your work is published so people can buy it.

Of course, nowadays many people don’t have a choice about leaving a real job. Their employers or the economy itself might have made the choice for them. Layoffs and business closings currently have over 15 million Americans out of work. That’s as of now — who knows what the situation might be like in six months or a year? If you’ve always dreamed about starting that writing career and you suddenly find yourself out of a real job and with plenty of time on your hands, this might be the time to start work on that freelance career. In between job hunting exercises — and I certainly don’t suggest that you forget about getting a new real job — start writing.

No matter what your situation is, you need to take a career change seriously. Start by doing some soul searching. Answer the following questions as honestly as possible:

    Writer's Keyboard This is a real writer’s keyboard.
  • Do you have the skills to be a writer? As professional journalist Dan Tynan recently wrote in his blog, “Just because you know how to operate a keyboard doesn’t make you a writer.” I couldn’t have said this any better. Too many typists out there think they’re writers. Get real. Look at your work objectively. Have other people read it — people who will give you objective feedback. If you’re not a writer, you’d better build some skills before you try to make it a career. Unless the topics you write about are in great demand, no editor is going to want to spend time repairing your prose prior to publication.
  • Do you understand the importance of getting your work published? You can’t make money on what you write unless it’s published someplace for people to read. While print publishing appears to be in a slow spiral to death, that’s not your only publishing option. But you do need to find a way to publish that’ll earn you money. The way I see it, your options range from starting your own blog and hoping to get advertising revenues to support you (good luck, especially as online advertising declines) to building a relationship with a traditional print publisher who pays under formal contract by the word, assignment, or book.
  • Do you have the business skills to connect with paying markets? That’s really what it’s all about. You can be the best writer in the world, but unless you can find a match for your work with a publisher willing to pay for it, you’re simply not going to succeed on your own. If you’re trying to write books, that’s when you might consider an agent — and kiss away 10% to 15% of your gross earnings.
  • Do you have a plan for getting started as a writer? If you don’t, can you make one that’ll work? As detailed above, I had a plan. My friend, Mary, didn’t. The plan is one of the reasons I succeeded and she didn’t. (The other reasons may be in this bulleted list.) The plan was reasonable and it required a lot of hard work. I didn’t whine or complain when I got a rejection letter for a book idea. I just developed other ideas and kept trying to sell them. I also didn’t sponge off my future husband or family to get by during the lean times. I always had some kind of work, some kind of revenue source. It simply isn’t fair to your friends or family to build your writing career on their backs.

Right now, real journalism is in serious decline. Who knows what position I’d be in now, if I’d made that major switch in college? Would I have gone into pure journalism and be a victim of the cutbacks we’re seeing today? Or would I have used the writing skills and insights I’d gained during my college education to branch into some other kind of writing?

Perhaps the kind of writing I do now?

Who knows?

I like to think that there will always be a need for talented writers. I like to think that it’s still something that a person can make into a career.

But until you’re able to earn at least half of your income from writing, don’t quit your day job.