Several years ago, I attended a conference of environmental science writers. I met some interesting people there, but being a new guy in the biz, we all were like ships passing on the open ocean. Among them was a young woman who went on to clean up the Anacostia River and along the way write three books, all of which I have in my library because their subjects snared me. Then she went off on a sailboat and …
Another passing ship was a bundle of energy going someplace and I wanted to know where. I am a very good reporter and columnist and it was just one of those feelings, but at the time my life was in transition and I didn’t know where I’d sell a story I could not explain why anyone should buy.
Check that part about being a reporter. Specify news reporter. Lots of experience with assignments about government and farming and a regular column about my life coming up in rural Maine, but no experience selling a story to an editor I’d never met about a science writer who wrote about I didn’t know what except I knew it would make a good story
It’s the biggest part of 20 years later and Wendee Nicole has been to Africa where she started a successful non-profit called Redemption Song Foundation working with a community abandoned by its government. She adopted a 10-year-old orphan lass who is now a student at Stanford University and wants to work with the United Nations.
How I know about how the story I should have written would have been a good one is I listened this week to a podcast hosted by Hilary Sloane called Driftwood Conversations, featuring an interview with Wendee Nicole and her daughter Joyce Orishaba.
To hear more about the story I should have written, head for your favorite podcast provider and subscribe to https://www.driftwoodconversations.org/ Driftwood Conversations. And then listen to the other programs on Hilary’s list: the artist who paints time-lapses about California wildfires, the documentary photographer who started Momenta Group to support other documentary storytellers …
You’ll be glad you did.