You can sell your writing

Over the years people have asked me, “Art, did you ever teach regular courses at schools and such?

Nope, I have given many speeches and other presentations to students in classes at K-12 schools and at several colleges and universities; Michigan State, Notre Dame and Purdue to name a few but I have no credentials to teach. 

Still in 1968 and 1969 I taught three 6-week evening courses titled “You can sell your writing,” at the YWCA’s in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Lansing, Michigan. In 1969 late evenings, after teaching the course in Grand Rapids I would return home and work into the wee hours of the morning talking into my tape recorder and covered everything I’d talked about in that live class. I also made copies of the hand-outs from the class. I did this once a week for six weeks and then had produced a six-tape audio album. Then I wrote an ad and ran it for several months in the very popular magazine for writers named Writer’s Digest. 

I managed to sell more albums than the high cost of the ad demanded and one prospect bought an album and then called and made me an offer to put my albums in his program. His organization was called Tape Rental Library.  He bought several courses  from me and rented tapes to his clients. It made sense to me and I sold a number of albums that way and it was a new experience for me. Some writers in each class I taught began making sales of their writing. 

One fellow who had listened to my tapes wrote me a note that looked like a telegram and stated that he had read an article I’d written and listened to a number of my tapes from Tape Rental Library and if I happened to be in New York City in the future he would really like to meet me. Just two weeks later I got an invite to speak in NYC to a group of railroad presidents.  

I arranged a meeting with that young man too. Now let me tell you a bit about my course. The course was built around one poem I had written. It had been rejected 24 times before I received a check from an editor. The whole secret to my course was not improving your writing skill as much as it was about the fact that my poem never changed in any way. Not a single comma. It was as good or as bad as it ever was.  Twenty-four different editors had an opportunity to buy it.  Finally, one did.  Most new writers might write something, send it to one or two editors and if it was rejected, they would surmise “there must be something wrong with it.” Then they would either quit writing or write something new. Persistence was an essential key for writers.   

Now back to that new friend in NYC. The one who had listened to my tapes.  We met. Our paths crossed a number of times in our speaking and writing careers.  Years passed.  He became involved in a publishing endeavor with a partner. Their book they were showing publishers was rejected by one publisher after another. 

Now listen to this, please!  Their book that was rejected again, again and again, in fact it was rejected 150 times  was titled “Chicken Soup For the Soul”. That young man that listened to those rented tapes of mine so many years before via Tape Rental Library was Mark Victor Hanson. It is claimed that that book and a long parade of books that followed in their series, with special editions in most every language that printed books, has resulted in the sale of over five hundred million books. 

When somebody asked me, “Art, did your teaching help any of your students?” I had to reply honestly, “God only knows.”