Writing about writing - the guts of me

I've worked for a publishing company for almost 15 years now. I have loved selling and producing great advertising campaigns for a WIDE variety of clients. I have lived, loved and grown up swimming in words and images.

There has also never been a single word of editorial content, not an errant byline stating Created By Marielle Howard, printed in any of our publications.

Louisiana Business Inc, which was just Business Report and its annual supplements when I started this journey, has a strict, concrete thick strict, division between its advertising and editorial teams. This has given me both pain and relief over the years. Regardless of how I felt about our line in the sand, it was there.

I guess if I hadn't loved selling and creating advertising so much, the line might have posed a moral dilemma well before now. A few years ago, I began missing exercising the art of writing and reporting. But the line was still there.

My love of writing began in high school. A brave and brash English teacher taught a poor tomboy girl how to use poetry and prose to express herself. From tentative journal pages, to collections of short poems, to full fledged contest entries and even my first foray into publishing of mine and my classmates poetry in a magazine, Margaret Goode instilled in me a passion for the written word.

Mrs. Goode so profoundly influenced my life that to this day, I want to grow up to be a high school gifted English teacher. She changed my definition of myself, gave me permission to write my own story and the courage to laugh at myself along the journey.

And what a journey it's been. I continued to write after high school. From published analyses in my political science classes, to stories in LSU's student newspaper, I managed to feed my love of writing and share that love with a wider audience. My second degree in public relations was as much about my love of writing as my awareness that I would need a real job after college and I didn't know any political scientists.

After college, my writing became about profit. My career took a turn into the marketing world and I wrote, a lot. It wasn't the great investigative or insightful analysis pieces of my college days, but it was pen to paper with a paycheck. Oddly, this stab at writing was equally enjoyable.

From there, I ended up in sales and advertising. More specifically, I was in the business of selling advertising. Probing questions, concise proposals and fast ad headlines filled my time. All the while, life was happening and I drifted further from my love of creative writing.

A husband, kids, a career, cancer, life, death, marriage, sales, goals, life. My creative energy found lots of outlets. Photography, scrapbooking, home decorating, arts and crafts, teacher gifts, coworker gifts, baby gifts. I was telling stories, just in other ways.

One afternoon while at a professional conference in rural Tennessee, I learned about Eastern Tennessee State University. This magical place actually has a master's program in - wait for it - STORY TELLING! I told everyone I knew for months after this encounter that I was moving to rural Tennessee and going back to college. I felt my calling.

Then I discovered blogging. What a perfect way to burn my creative fuel! Pictures + words + readers, I thought this was going to be my lifelong outlet for all of the stories I've collected.

As I began experimenting with blogging, my work life changed. I'd never considered it, but the art of selling was being redefined in the most amazing way. Self appointed experts were now raking in the bucks teaching sales teams around the country that sales wasn't about probing questions, concise proposals and fast ad headlines, instead sales and advertising were now all about STORY TELLING!

If you ever doubt if there is a God, then the long thread of this story should at least convince you there is some greater and infinitely humorous power bringing us all full circle. I have no doubt there is a God and he had just revealed the guts of me - shown me my core purpose and passion in life - I am a Story Teller of the first order.

So now I am exposed to the core. I know what my Purpose is, with a capital P. Now what?
Lots of little projects, a story here, a press release there, a stint writing newsletter articles later and I was longing for a byline again. Part of me really wanted to see one of my stories, presented with authority, for consumers to chew on, be dragged into and sent away from different.

This summer, completely by accident, that powerful moment came.
"Would you consider reviewing the dinner you attended this weekend?"
"Would I!?!?"
"We'll have to get permission"
Patiently waiting while banging out the lead and first 5 paragraphs anticipating getting the chance.
"OK, this once, you can do this if you still want to."
"SIGN ME UP! WHEN IS IT DUE?"
"It's here!"

I have always been a story teller. At my core, it is what I am and what I love doing. I didn't need a byline to know that.

This byline gives me something completely other than validation of my life's true calling.
It gives me the joy of work.
It gives me the giddy excitement of opening an issue of one of our magazines like it's the BIG present under the Christmas tree.
It gives me immense gratitude for the people and challenges that have given me a voice.
It gives me pride that I work for an organization that gives stories life and import.

Lucky Number 13

Be careful what you ask for.

We've all heard this caution for those who would wish too ambitiously, a reminder that it may not be in our own best interest to get everything we ask for. It also alludes to the universal truth that we often don't even know what's best for ourselves. And in the curious case of my career, it has proven absolutely true.

Thirteen years ago, as a young marketing and design "professional" (I'm using that word VERY loosely), I fell into a job interview that I wasn't looking for. I was a designer, a writer, a buyer, a marketer. I had PR skills. And I had no interest whatsoever in going into sales.

After my first interview with Business Report, I went home and told my husband these people were crazy. I hate salespeople and hate being sold to even more. On top of that, these ladies work for commission, they only get paid if they sell!

After my second interview, I was intrigued. I went home and told David that I'd always been an A student and the idea of working at a job where I got a report card every two weeks was beginning to appeal to me.

Then came my third interview, the pivotal moment when I sentenced myself to a career I never saw coming.

Julio Melara, a ball of fire and purpose to say the least, stormed into the conference room where Debi and I were meeting. He picked up my resume, looked it up and down and promptly tossed it across the table at me. Mind you, not to me, but AT me.

"Your resume looks like a shooting range. A job a year every year since college? What are you looking for?"

Whoa! Intimidated didn't begin to describe what I was feeling. I didn't even want this job, didn't ask for the interview to begin with. Why was he coming at me so directly?

Never one to back down from a challenge, I took a deep breath, put on my best "I'm not intimidated by you" face and replied.

"I'm looking for a company that will be as committed to me as I am to it." Booyah!

Thirteen years later, still occasionally intimidated by Julio's direct challenges, here's what I've learned from getting the best job I never imagined I wanted:

• Thank God for people willing to take chances on you. In one way or another, we are all a gamble. Thank God for those people who roll the dice on us for no other reason than a hunch. Debi Brand bet on me, even in the face of her boss' doubts, and I will always love her for that.
• Thank God of the people willing to challenge you. There have been days when I've imagined myself in some quiet little automated desk job. And then I get back to work. My energy and abilities have been challenged A LOT in these 13 years. And I am so thankful that this place, these people always have and will continue to push me to be better. Their challenges to my comfort zones make me a better woman, wife, mom, daughter, friend and employee.
• Thank God for telling a better story with your life than even you could imagine. When I told Julio what I was looking for, I didn't know what it meant, not really. I have learned about commitment 1,000 different ways over the last 13 years. Some have been in my professional life, some in my personal life. And these people I work with everyday have been an important part of all of these lessons. We have laughed, cried, celebrated and mourned together. This has turned out to be so much more than a way to make a living, it has been my way of making a Life.

The rest of my career may be here at Business Report. It may not. That's for God to reveal. But either way, I will love and be committed to this place, these people for the rest of my life. Because the rest of me would not be the same without them.