GET STARTED WRITING TODAY!

One of the things I constantly tell new and wanna-be writers is that they can become successful, no matter what their background or education. And that’s true. I know many successful writers who have no related experience or education—and basically, I’m one of them.

While I did study journalism throughout high school, my college experience in journalism was anything but promising. I didn’t learn anything there because nothing was taught. Oh, we did write reports on various media-related topics, but in the college I attended, a professor did not have to bring any practical experience to the classroom. One class was spent listening to Marshall McLuhan repeat over and over on a tape, “the medium is the massage,” a popular phrase from that era which came to signify that the media had nothing important to deliver, it just left viewers in a stupor. Basically true, but I was horrified that an entire session that I was paying for offered no more than that! I then asked about teacher’s qualifications, including experience being published. Just as I expected, nada, none!

Newspapers and magazines want writers who are prepared to enter the field, who know how to write but also know something about publishing. They want someone who can work on short deadlines, if necessary, and can reliably deliver ready-to-publish manuscripts.

Luckily I had a wonderful journalism teacher (Ms. Middlebrook) throughout high school who taught all those things and much, much more. She oversaw a weekly newspaper and yearbook. We did the work; everything, including editing. She was demanding, yet encouraging. If your writing sucked, she wasn’t at all hesitant to tell you so. She would gently suggest that you find some other career field to explore.

Now I realize many of you may not have had even high school journalism, but don’t let that discourage you. Everything Ms. Middlebrook taught us can be learned from books readily available to anyone, and local community colleges generally offer classes in either journalism or in creative writing. Either would be useful to new writers, especially if you’re hoping to get information on publishing. Talk to the editors and publishers of local newspapers and ask their advice on furthering your education and getting published. You’ll be making connections that may lead to future assignments as well as learning which courses to take, if needed. Talk to people who write for a living and ask them to mentor you, or at least offer you some advice. Most writers I’ve met enjoy helping other writers get started. Join a local writers association—just make sure it’s not made up entirely of beginners, but has a few members who have experience.

As for books to read, go to your library and check their offerings. If yours is a small library, ask about interlibrary loans. Check the latest copy of “Books in Print” at your library to find titles that sound promising, and order them to be sent to you. Go to bookstores and browse the “Reference books” shelf to see what titles they have available, then order them from your library. I don’t suggest buying one until you know it offers valuable information that you will refer to again and again. Go to your local university or college bookstore and browse their bookshelves. You can buy books there even if you’re not enrolled as a student.

Read “Writers Digest” magazine at your library to find helpful articles on getting publishing, or on any writing topic you wish to pursue. I went to local libraries and read back issues, then copied articles that held relevant information to read later at home. Also, go to www.writersweekly.com for a great weekly newsletter on writing. It offers many helpful articles that may offer relevant answers to your questions or concerns.

Finally after all that reading, I felt prepared to enter the field of writing as a fulltime writer, although I have continued to read new books to keep up with changing technology because the field of publishing keeps changing. Now many traditional newspapers are offered only as digital copies, so learning as much about the “new” publishing experience as possible is helpful to all writers.

Get experience wherever and however you can. What you want is copies (tear sheets) of your work to show editors that you have been published. It doesn’t matter if your first articles appear in business, corporate, community, or church newsletters, or small community newspapers, just as long as you can get a copy to prove you have been published. If you work for a large corporation, or in a field that produces a regular newsletter, write some articles on your industry for it. And keep talking to editors and publishers of local newspapers because if you can provide an article that will interest their readers, many are willing to give a new, untried writer a chance.

My first articles were published in a newsletter where I worked. When I moved to a small community, I offered to write articles for the local paper about the topic I had written about in the newsletter—and I had copies of previously published articles to show. Since I had worked as an interior designer, at first I wrote about decorating homes. From there, it was on to the big city. I met a publisher of a regional business newspaper at a meeting, and I just happened to have some samples of articles that had appeared in that small town paper. He asked me to write an article about, and get a photo of a local business woman (my choice of who) and submit it to him. I did, and was offered the position of writing a regular feature about women in business. It eventually turned into people in business, when opened many new doors for me.

So my advice is to get educated, but it isn’t necessary to go back to school. Read! Then, be prepared when opportunities come knocking. If none are obvious, find some. You would be surprised how many small communities have newspapers run by a staff of one who does writing, editing and publishing. They’ve usually got more to do than is humanly possible and would welcome someone who can cover local events or chamber meetings, or school sports events, or hobbies like gardening, workshop projects, book reviews, and any number of other topics that would interest their readers. Ask!

My next advice is to be prepared. Opportunities exist around every corner if you’ll seek them out and if you’re ready to pounce. Writing is not rocket science. It boils down to being able to explain something clearly and simply so readers can understand it. It definitely helps if you can turn in copy that doesn’t need much editing or cleaning up, so brush up on grammar and spelling and keep a dictionary and thesaurus handy so your writing isn’t full of misspellings and repetitive words.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, ARKANSAS - THE MUSIC MAKES IT GREAT

One of the best places we discovered while RVing was Mountain View, Arkansas. The opportunities to sightsee, explore a cavern, hike, camp, fish, see live musical performances, and a myriad of other activities abound here. We kept being told that we should go there because of its beauty and old-fashioned hometown feel. Then on our first RV trip there, we heard about the music. Musicians gather around the courthouse square in small groups daily and every evening to sing and play traditional songs with guitars, fiddles, mandolins and various other instruments, saluting the music that has been passed down through generations of their families. This is true American folk music formed from the fabric of hardscrabble lives scratched out in remote Appalachian mountain communities.

After driving the few miles into town a few times to enjoy the music, as well as the Saturday night show on a stage set up in front of the courthouse, we were hooked and I knew I had to write some articles about the town. I interviewed several people and they all told me I should look up a man named Jimmy Driftwood to learn the real history of the place, since he was such an integral part of it all. I called him, and he said “Come on out. We’d love to have you.” That was the start of a warm, close friendship that lasted till the day he died.

His name had sounded familiar to me, and I soon realized that he had played a vital role in the folk renaissance back in the early sixties. Here I had been one of folk music’s biggest fans, but duty and Hawaii called me away to where another type of music predominated. This music involved steel guitars and the hula, and was lovely, but lacked the primal pull of my roots. Still, it was Hawaii’s folk music. And I drifted away from folk music, just as most of America soon did.

Meanwhile, it seems that Jimmy (or Jimmie) Driftwood, the author of more than 6,000 songs based on life in the Ozarks and American history, became somewhat of a folk hero in the early sixties, appearing in Carnegie Hall and at the Newport Folk Festival, as well as being a regular on the Grand Ole Opry. Jimmy had been a history teacher when his wife first encouraged him to write a song to help spark his students’ interest in the history of our country. He penned “The Battle of New Orleans,” and let’s just say that the rest was history. This is probably his most remembered hit on both country and pop charts and won Song of the Year Grammy for both Jimmy Driftwood and Johnny Horton, who recorded it.

In 1959, a half-dozen of his songs were on American pop and country charts. Many of his songs were performed on stage by folk-artists like Joan Baez, Judy Collins, the Weavers, the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, Burl Ives, and Pete Seeger, and included “Unfortunate Man” as well as “Wilderness Road,” which won a Grammy nomination for best folk performance. Other well known songs included “Tennessee Stud,” for which Eddie Arnold won a Grammy nomination in both folk and pop categories, and “North to Alaska.” His music echoed America’s past and wars, and was influenced by stories from his grandfather, who had lived during the Civil War.

While Jimmy was becoming well known, his little home county drifted lazily in its remote valley location, 30 miles from the nearest major highway. After traveling the world with folk groups, Jimmy realized the treasures his own region of the country held, where musicians from almost every family sang and played their kind of music on their front porches in the evening. These were descendants of the people who had migrated from the mountains of Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia back in the early to mid-19^th century, and before that from Ireland, Scotland and England. Jimmy felt this type of music needed to be preserved and that Mountain View would be a perfect showcase of this musical treasure.

Jimmy left the music business to return home, where he gathered a group of fellow musicians from the region to make a trip with him to Washington D.C. to try and generate funds to build a national repository for folk music. Jimmy was already known to influential politicians in D.C. through his conservation work for the beautiful Buffalo River and nearby Blanchard Caverns in the Ozarks, so he lined up local musicians on the steps of the Capitol to sing and play. Many of them had never flown on a plane; some had never even been outside their remote valley. Jimmy exceeded his hometown’s monetary expectations by a couple of million dollars and went home to help establish the Ozark Folk Center, where traditional Ozark heritage could be preserved. In addition to a theater where world-known entertainers perform on occasion, the Ozark Folk Center holds a living museum where traditional crafts are demonstrated, and offers a steady schedule of workshops during spring, summer and fall where students can learn to play musical instruments such as autoharp and dulcimer. There’s also a gift shop featuring locally made pottery and crafts.

Jimmy was also instrumental in starting the Ozark Folk Festival in 1963, which takes place the third weekend in April of each year. The festival typically attracts more than one-hundred thousand visitors, eager to enjoy the music and spring in the Ozarks. The festival still takes place each year, and a fall festival called the Annual Beanfest and Outhouse Races has been added. For this fun-filled festival, locals design and create their own human-powered outhouses to race down a street adjoining the courthouse, and bean-masters from across the country show up to cook huge pots of beans and cornbread to feed the many thousands of tourists that show up during the last weekend of October. Music takes center stage at this festival, too.

The town is still small, with a year-round population of around 2000 or so contented souls, but each spring and fall, every motel and RV Park for miles is stuffed to overflowing. Often RVers have to locate some local landowner who is willing to let them park their RVs in a vacant field for the few days of the festivals. We returned for several years for the fall festival, and even secured a yearly work camping position in one of the RV Parks, thus ensuring a parking place. We once shared our over-sized RV site with another RVer, as did many others, and some years we spent hours on the phone trying to locate sites for RVers who drove into town without reservations.

We even stayed there during a couple of summers, which can get hot and sticky, but nonetheless, beautiful. And every night we would make our way down to the courthouse square or to one of the local theaters to listen to music. I even purchased a mountain dulcimer from McSpadden, widely regarded as the leading maker of dulcimers. Unfortunately, my playing skills don’t anywhere near match the quality of the dulcimer nor the talent of most locals there!

And Jimmy passed away in 1998 at 91 years of age. Every year before then we visited him and his beautiful part Cherokee wife. He would always pull out his guitar and play and sing for us. He continued to perform in his own theater, the Jimmie Driftwood Barn for as long as his health allowed. The last time we saw him at home, he performed a little jig for us on his back porch.

Somehow Mountain View is not the same for us since he has passed, although we’ve returned a few times since. However, he left a legacy that will continue on. The music goes on in the square, as do the festivals. Each year, musicians converge from as far away as New York City (a woman doctor who plays the hammer dulcimer), and from the west coast.

We always go watch our favorite groups play their timeless music when we return there. But we always have to drive by Jimmy’s humble place in Timbo just to remind ourselves that this is where it all started—with the dream of one man who gave up a successful musical career to return to his home in the Ozark mountains to try and save the timeless music. I don’t think he ever stopped writing. And even today I heard "Battle of New Orleans," which reminded me that his music lingers on.

If you want to drive to Mountain View, it's at the crossroads of Highways 5, 9 and 14 in north central Arkansas.