MarkFord
Becoming a Writer… in Spite of Myself
As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted be a writer. But I was always aware – perhaps because my father gave up his career as a writer for the steady income of teaching – that it was not going to be easy.
I took several courses in writing in college and graduate school, but my degrees were in English Literature, in case the writing dream didn’t pan out. I wrote a bit the next year while I made a living as a bartender, and I wrote a bit more from 1975 to 1977 as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. I earned a meager living by teaching English at the University of Chad, but I wasn’t making a nickel from my writing.
I landed my first job as a professional writer for a business monthly called African Business & Trade. Why Leo Welt, the owner of the publishing company, hired me, I’ll never understand. I knew a few things about Africa. But I knew virtually nothing about business. I didn’t even understand the meaning of the word “trade.” (I’m not kidding!)
Despite what I imagined as lucid prose, my writing wasn’t wowing the subscribers to African Business & Trade. In fact, most of the responses we were getting from readers were criticisms of my ignorance and complaints about the naivety of my ideas. No kudos for my diction and style.
With Number One Son in the oven, I didn’t have the luxury to ignore these Philistines and go on honing my “craft.” I needed those weekly paychecks to pay the bills. So, I swallowed my pride and began to learn about… African business and trade!
I was accidentally drawn into an area of knowledge I never intended to study. And as I studied and learned, I discovered that writing about business and trade was a lot more interesting than I had imagined. I bent into it, and eventually became the writer I was being paid to be. Reader feedback turned positive. Renewal income went up. By the end of my second year, I had been promoted to Editor in Chief of all the company’s publications. I wrote essays on doing business in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China. I even wrote my first published book: Information Beijing.
That landed me a job with a much larger publishing company in Florida, with greater prospects for me and my family and continued opportunities for developing my knowledge of writing. Including writing advertising copy.
I became a junior partner a year later, and ran the business as it grew from revenues of barely $1 million to $135 million in seven years. I attempted retirement when I was 39 and returned to work as a consultant and partner in another publishing company. Their revenues grew from $8 million to $100 million in about 7 years, and then to $500 million, and eventually broke the billion-dollar ceiling.
I played many roles in my career. One I always enjoyed was teaching what I had learned about the art and science of direct response copywriting. I give interviews about it now and then on podcasts for entrepreneurs, marketers, and copywriters. Click here to watch one I did recently.
