WRITE ABOUT IT!

If I'd use any one WORD to describe myself, it would be just that - WORD. Word got me my first writing job as editor-in-chief of my college paper when I wrote an article about being proud to be from the same town as LA Mayor Thomas Bradley (Negro League Baseball player and founder, Rube Foster is also from Calvert, Texas.). Word got me kicked out of school for being a "black militant" (kind of hard to do at a black school!). Word got my first play staged December 16, 1978, in Wichita, Kansas (it's a musical comedy - yes, I wrote all 34 songs - based on Aesops' fable "The Tortoise and the Hare"). Word got me my first "real" writing gig at The Toledo Journal when the editor read an article I wrote titled "The Mammie Myth." Word got me a second newspaper job at The Sojourner's Truth newspaper, also in Toledo. Word even got me into a post-graduate program to study toward an educational specialist degree when I had to write an essay to apply for a grant to be enrolled in a Early Intervention graduate program at The University of Toledo. After 32 years working as an educator fulltime - as an elementary teacher, an educational consultant for a textbook company, a family life educator, a behavior specialist, a habilitation specialist, and finally in administration as a habilitation coordinator- I gave in to Word and am now a fulltime writer and a parttime Marketing Consultant/ Program Development Specialist/ Staff Development Specialist. I just published my first novel, completed a curriculum guide, and re-wrote a play that I'm entering in this year's National Black Theatre Festival's reader's theatre competition. WORD UP!