Fall Kickoff: Michele Weldon—A Writer Who Wears Many Hats
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Michele Weldon, author of I Closed My Eyes and Writing to Save Your Life, freelance journalist, and professor at the Medill School of Journalism, began her keynote address by trying on her old hats. “This one is my Northwestern cap,” she said as she held up a cap with the purple and white insignia. “This one is my journalist’s hat,” she announced as she tried on her pink cowboy hat. “I only wear this one out of state. And, this one is my author’s cap,” she said as she held up a gray newsboy cap.
Her metaphor: in order to carve out a successful career one must be versatile, creative, and have multiple skills, fitting nicely with this year’s CWIP theme, “Invest in Yourself.” “One must cultivate a wardrobe of versatile skills and be marketable,” she said. “How will you deliver your brand?”
Her message was to keep your eye on that big dream, but do small things along the way to achieve it. “Write that book you’ve always wanted to write. Think about it as sentences. Write a page a day. By the end of the year, you will have 300 pages to work with.” Weldon began her writing career with the Juvenile Journal as a child and then writing for the Pioneer Press’s teen section. She attended Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism. Upon graduation, her first job was writing for North Shore magazine.
“I made my own way with a lot of help from other people,” she said. “I asked people questions and I learned public speaking by doing it.” “One builds a wardrobe of hats with failure, successful guidance, and hard work.” Weldon told a hilarious story that took place when she was writing celebrity profiles for the Dallas Times Herald. She interviewed Tom Cruise “before he was nuts, alone in a hotel room and I flirted [with him while] pregnant. He sent me a baby gift eight months later.” She said that she “made myself be honest in my writing” of her first book about her emotionally abusive marriage. This book earned her several awards including the International Women’s Peacepower Award in 2000, and it got her on Oprah. Alexis Maislen is a freelance writer who is currently writing a creative nonfiction memoir/survival guide about finding mental health help in college. She is studying to be a librarian at Dominican University, and interns at Northwestern University’s Schaffner Library, which is shared by Kellogg School of Management and School of Continuing Studies students. She can be reached at writetrutham@netzero.net. |
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