I got fired from my first writing job ... and other strokes of luck.

I taught jr. high school for ten years, enjoyed it, loved the kids and got good work reviews. But by the end I'd begun to publish my writing for pay ... things like short fiction in Cricket magazine and Sunday features in the old Seattle P.I. ... and I was ready to make writing my day job.

So I used my fiction and features to leverage myself into a job writing catalog copy for an outdoor equipment company called Early Winters. The name is still around though the original company is long gone. I wrote my brains out.

I loved my Correcting Selectric, and I loved filling blank sheets of paper with information and benefits of sometimes quirky outdoor stuff. Copywriting is the best training in the world because, rain or shine, the goal is lively, compelling, spot-on copy. Lots of it. I was thrilled that they liked my stuff and used everything, less thrilled when they fired me at the end of four months and I had to go home and tell my wife.

Why did they fire me? I honestly have no clue. Didn't then, either. So I drove across the lake and interviewed with the senior copy editor at Eddie Bauer, a man named John Kime, who had used to write "Dragnet" radio episodes with Jack Webb. He asked how much I'd been making: I told him honestly, $6 an hour. It stank even then.

He said he'd pay me $12 an hour and I'd start Monday. There's no joy quite like the joy of a new job and massive raise. From there I went to advertising agencies, big national projects ... McDonald's, Holland America, Starbucks ... producing TV spots in L.A. and later out on my own.

Why mention all this now? Because in the last three years I've written five and a half novels and published three so far, and people sometimes ask how I do that. Part of the answer is I've written for pay for about 35 years. I have that muscle. And here's what you need to know from my experience.

If you're going to be a writer, write every day no matter how it feels. I do about 800 words most days ... two pages. If you only do one page a day, you still end up with a novel in a year. This is the most important part of writing: showing up.

You can do that, can't you? Show up?