Pull Up a Chair by My Campfire!
I’m Karen. I’ve been writing since I was old enough to hold one of those fat little-kid pencils and draw crude letters on specially lined manila paper.
I have aphantasia, a neurological difference that means I can’t visualize. Like, at all. And my theory is that aphantasia gave me two things: a wild internal narrator who won’t shut up and the ability to notice things. Really notice them.
Noticing has taken me from the level of “competent writer” to… well, we’ll get into that in a bit.
Why I Coach
Because I loved having more skilled writers coach me.
Maybe it started with my very first paid writing gig at 15—covering high school basketball for the local newspaper, even though I didn’t know a full-court press from man-to-man coverage. There was also my creative writing teacher, Miss U, spurring me on and helping me get better.
And then suddenly it was 1997. The internet was still the Wild West. Few people knew how to build a website, but I was determined to figure it out because there were a bunch of writers in the Prodigy Arts & Writing chat room looking for a place to critique one another’s work.
I love that shit.
The website I built—and (miraculously) figured out how to put online—became a celebrated early gathering place for writers who wanted to learn from and with one another. Writer’s Digest named it one of its “101 Best Websites for Writers” in three separate years. The Wall Street Journal and USA Today published write-ups calling it an early example of the coming “boom in online education.”
The site was humble. Imperfect. Scrappy. And it confirmed just how much I adore working with fellow writers.
A Little Street Cred
The website had grown into a sprawling community and business, and running it became too much for me to handle by myself. I was a young mom, and burnout hit hard. So, I sold the business and started working as a video game journalist and managing editor covering the latest fad—multiplayer online role-playing games.
And I got to mentor writers. It was my favorite part of the job. Even playing video games to write guides and reviews couldn’t compare to the dopamine rush of helping a writer find their voice.
From there, my writing career kept rolling:
- Grammarly — I was on the three-person team that created a viral study of the grammar of people supporting the 2016 U.S. presidential candidates. (Can you guess who lost that race?) And I wrote hundreds of articles, earning the dubious title The One Who Doesn’t Need Editing. (Like all writers, I absolutely do. And Grammarly’s copyeditor was the best.)
- Macmillan Publishers — If you listen to podcasts and love language, you’ve probably heard of Grammar Girl (Mignon Fogarty). I got to be her editor for a couple of glorious years while leading the team of podcasters at Macmillan’s Quick & Dirty Tips network. And we hit it off so well that I still write scripts for her today.
- ID.me — OK, it was corporate work, but I still got to mentor writers as editorial lead. I built a scrappy little team, and we launched a consumer-facing blog that earned 1.6 million visits in its first year. Not too shabby!
Read Something I Wrote
From I’ll Go First:
Advice for writers, from Grammarly: