I grew up in Boeing town, where signs of Pride in Excellence were plastered everywhere. Plus, my dad was a Boeing lifer that regularly brought home certificates that proved his excellent work performance. My formative years were filled with lessons on how to succeed by doing my best work and always striving to do better.
It was a lesson that I practiced every day. And I still practice to this day.
My addiction to freelancing started in 1980 at Manpower Temporary Services. I temped at almost every business in the Seattle area. I composed correspondence for corporate executives. Formatted reports for engineers. And coordinated the content reviews for these writing projects.
After college, I went to work for a series of investment firms. Along with my regular job, I wrote, edited, and produced newsletters, sales training materials, compliance manuals, corporate profiles, and research reports.
My early experiences taught me many lessons. I learned that I have keen spacial abilities that help me find solutions. I discovered that I loved to learn and that I’m a fearless learner. I also learned that I’m flexible and adapt to most situations.
My writing career launched in the late-1980s when the tech industry boomed in Seattle. Over the next ten years, I collaborated on writing projects at Boeing, IBM, Microsoft, and others. I designed white papers for research projects. Wrote workflow procedures for engineers. And edited training classes for programming languages.
Those experiences led to book contracts when computer how-to books came of age in the mid-1990s. I was the author of 20 books and a technical editor for 21 books. The editors at Macmillan, IDG Books, and Prima Publishing were the best. As they polished my prose, they helped me rise to new heights.
When the bottom fell out of the computer book market, my focus turned to journalism. A chance meeting with a newspaper editor resulted in gigs with two Hawaii newspapers. For the next four years, I conducted interviews for feature stories and researched ideas for a gardening column. It was during this time that I began to explore the Wild World of Web Writing.
All this leads me to where I am today. I love my job as a Quality Assurance Editor on the Dotdash Quality Team. Helping businesses create quality content is a blast. And, my diverse work experiences give me the flexibility to take on a variety of projects.
