Her Story
About Carol
My involvement in writing began with theater. My father had been an actor, and he would perform for us - he would do monologues in the kitchen, and it fascinated me. At first, I thought I wanted to go into acting and took it as a minor in college, but I found that was a very tough road. Later, I put my energy into writing, and I wrote my first play in college. I joined a playwriting group that led to a producing group, which led to forming a not-for-profit festival in New York called the Fresh Fruit Festival. The idea of the festival was to bring together the outsiders whose work wasn't always seen because it didn't fit, and we got amazing response from performers and writers all over the world. That was over 20 years ago, and it's still running. During that time, I started doing publicity for the festival and was hired to do publicity for other organizations. I also was writing plays and producing some, and was asked to do things like book doctoring and ghostwriting. I started in what I call the wonderful world of poetry, the most competitive field of writing, but the atmosphere in the world of poetry at the time was a little rough, so I went back to writing and took freelance-type courses. I've done everything in theater - directing, producing, book doctoring, ghostwriting. At this point, I'm retired from what we call a day job, and I've gone from playwriting, which is much more active, to novel writing. I've written two historical novels - one has been published, the other is in editing form. I'm also teaching an ad hoc course on writing for older people, because I noticed as I became an older person that I was being treated differently and my options kept lessening. I feel older people have a lot of creative things going for them, so I'm working with this class and we're putting together an anthology of older writers.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Carol
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to just doing what I loved and being able to take opportunities when they come. The one advice for success in the real world is: take it. People will come into your life offering opportunities, and it took me a very long time to understand that you're not cheating if you get an offer that helps you or your business to move along. Friendships and connections are probably the most important thing in business. I owe a lot of my nice pay work to someone recommending me that I knew.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I ever received was to do what you love. Eventually, it's not gonna make you rich, but it's going to make your life rich. This came from my father, who was an actor. When he was young, he was asked to sign a Hollywood contract, but his immigrant family was afraid to let him go, and acting wasn't a very admired profession, so they didn't let him. He worked in Vaudeville till there was no Vaudeville, and then he had to get regular jobs. He always told us to do what you love because he was so unhappy from not doing it.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The entire system of publishing and doing publicity has changed radically. It's so much more complicated and has more or less removed people from the equation. What you need for almost anything today is an algorithm, which was, by the way, my worst subject - math. My poor writer-singer friends don't make any money anymore. I had an email from a musician who wrote that his song was played a million times and he's sure to get at least 25 cents. In the golden days, there were people you could call up and even get to know them, and very often they'd help you with your job. A personal relationship would assist you in getting your things out there. No longer. It's a whole new world where human contact mostly is being eliminated.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I think the value that was set up when I founded the Fresh Fruit Festival is most important to me, and that is creative acceptance and opening, and not shutting people or ideas out. I think the mixing of cultures and ideas is the most important thing.
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