What do you do?
May 23rd, 2007 by Georgina
“What do you do?” Thanks for asking……
I’ve worked for a long time as a writer and editor for a wide range of corporate and government clients. Most of this work is made to order (”You want onions with that annual report?; “That news release: over easy or scrambled?”). But as often as I can, I like to run beyond the menu, pitching stories to magazine and book publishers on topics of my choosing. Thankfully, some of those pitches lead to assignments. I love being given licence to find out more about someone’s skills, passions, and preferred beverages or about the qualities of a corner of the world that set it apart from others and then to write about these interesting people and places.
In addition to co-authoring a travel guide and a travel guide/cookbook, I’ve written numerous articles over the past 20 years on such subjects as air medevac action in northern Alberta, change ringing, and the Siberian city of Irkutsk. And the evolution of cosmetic powder box design, the magic of a hammock, a community pole carving project that brought dozens of women and a patient Tsimshian man together. The success story of a West Coast clothing designer. A portrait artist who met with and painted 22 prominent Canadian women, all headless. A quilt artist whose exquisitely stitched erotica raises the craft to new levels (”Is that a gun in your pocket or just cotton wadding?”).
Everyone’s got a story and I like to hear it.