I have over 300 newspaper and magazine articles to my credit. About half are in numismatics. The others are typically profiles of people in businesses and technologies. I also develop computer documentation, both system level and user interface. I serve as the webmaster of the Michigan State Numismatic Society and I have my own site at
www.washtenawjustice.com. Both of those are "content" projects: I am not a graphics designer.
One advantage I had was growing up in a bilingual household. Our other language was Hungarian. It is non-Indo-European. Furthermore, I started German in the 7th grade with a university summer session for junior and senior high pupils. I entered college a junior in German. The language of course is basic to English, but still has old grammar (as does, Latin, for instance) which English dropped, . So, I got a good understanding of the mechanics of communication. Since then, I have had classes in Arabic, Japanese and Italian. I worked for two different Japanese companies, as well as Carl Zeiss. All of this helps me pick the right word for the right audience when working in English.
In addition to two Heath Literary Awards, the ANA granted me one for my "Money Talks" radio scripts. I first heard them before I joined the ANA. After I became a member, they put out a call for more, and was happy to have a dozen accepted. You get 40 seconds out of a minute to say something that the average person will find compelling and informative, without being able to show a picture or use a technical term like "obverse." It's a challenge.
We all write for boards like this, some more than others. While most people just come here to chat, I am conscious of my writing. Before the Internet, and even before BBSes, I subscribed to
The Libertarian Connection, which was run like a science fiction fanzine. Our subscriptions let us send in two pages of content. The publishers collated them and sent them out. It gave me enough visibility that I was able to place several rock album reviews in a regular print magazine,
Outlook, also for libs. That led to my writing two books for Loompanics.
I chose the Letters column as my path to break in to other venues. I had several in
Industrial Research and one in
Omni, when personal computering finally took off in the early to mid 1980s; and I began writing for local user group newspapers. Working as a computer programmer since 1979, in 1984, I was on a project that needed a user manual, so I wrote it.
After the Dot.Com Meltdown, I got all kinds of part time jobs, including security guard. I did well at it, eventually completing some degrees, but what I did really well at was writing Post Orders. When I decided to complete the four-year degree I never needed before, I chose criminology. Finishing a master's in social science, I elected for classes in remote sensing, geographic information systems, and physics. I am currently working a series of reviews of book that was overlooked,
Astronomical Symbols on Ancient and Medieval Coins by Marshall Faintich (MacFarland, 2008).
