We recently connected with Dave Scheiber and have shared our conversation below.

Dave, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I have, and that’s been very rewarding. The concern that your own business may not fly is always a big part of the initial decision. In my case, that decision came later down the road, after some 30 years as a journalist and another 10 in the non-profit communications realm. I come from a creative family – writers, musicians, illustrators, animators and graphic artists, editors and video producers, and it’s often been tempting to come up with a creative business that would incorporate those fields.

But I always had to weigh that against the realities of supporting my family – my wife Janie and I have six kids – all adults now –and for many years it simply was too risky to launch a business that might not generate sufficient income. Instead, I focused my creative energies beyond my day jobs on magazine freelancing, leading a local classic rock band in the Tampa Bay area that has involved Janie and some of our kids over the years, and beginning in 2007 co-authoring books and memoirs. I didn’t think about it at the time, but all of that was actually forming the foundation of what would become my own business.

The first was a collaboration with a fascinating individual named Bob Delaney, whom I had profiled in a two-part series for my paper. The book, Covert, chronicled Bob’s life as a young New Jersey State Trooper in the ‘70s who infiltrated the Mafia, then later became one of the NBA’s top referees. That project launched my side career as an author, the first of seven such books to date.

Fast forward to 2020 and the pandemic. After working remotely for eight months, I found that I really enjoyed the flexibility of working from home – and wasn’t looking forward to returning to an office setting The time just felt right to make the move to my own freelance writing business. I’d worked in the market for many years as a writer, and reached out to a variety of contacts who expressed interest in having me write for them – a wide variety of assignments primarily encompassing features, speechwriting, blogs, newsletters and magazine work under the ScheiberStories.com umbrella. There was still a risk, but I felt pretty sure I could get enough work to get things rolling. It took a few months, but I’m as busy now as ever – with the satisfaction of running my own business.

Dave, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Well, I more or less stumbled into journalism out of college. I’d been an English major at Swarthmore College outside of Philadelphia but did virtually no writing for the school paper. In fact, after graduating, I joined a country music band based in Doylestown, Pa., with big dreams of making it to Nashville. But after three months, the band wasn’t going anywhere and I moved back home to Bethesda, Md. The first job I could find was volunteering to cover high school football games for the local paper, the Montgomery County Sentinel.

That became my foot in the door, and led in three months to getting hired part-time at the Washington Post, covering high school sports and working as a copy-aide in the sports department. This was the mid-1970s, and the big names from the Watergate investigation were all still working in the newsroom – so that was a huge thrill for a kid right out of college who had seen and loved the movie, All the President’s Men, only six months earlier. Working at the Post is where I truly cut my teeth in journalism, and that led to a 30-year career at the St. Petersburg (now Tampa Bay) Times as a sportswriter, feature writer and entertainment editor.

I was fortunate to win many writing awards during my career, including first places in the National Headliner Awards, the Associated Press Sports Editors national writing contest, and the Green Eyeshades among them. My stories ran the gamut – from traveling to Hawaii and Pearl Harbor to write about a poignant softball game in the name of peace and reconciliation between World War II veterans from the U.S. and Japan, to profiling Bruce Springsteen’s legendary sax man Clarence Clemons and his work to support a homeless mission in Miami, to chronicling a first-ever tour stop by the Rolling Stones in Fargo, N.D. and the frenzy that ensued.

I also served for five years as a regular contributor to Sports Illustrated writing features and cover stories, profiling subjects like Chris Evert, Vinny Testaverde, and an emerging rookie sensation and now NFL Hall of Famer/college football coach Deion Sanders. I specialized in storytelling –always looking for ways to evoke emotion, find the human element, and do my best to creatively bring to life the tales of interesting people or compelling topics. And to a large degree, that’s what I do in my business today.

When the newspaper industry began to implode in 2009 due to the nation’s economic woes, I jumped to a position with Fox Sports’ regional operation in Florida as their Tampa Bay-based pro sports writer – and a two-year stint covering the Rays, Bucs and Lightning. But it was a contract position with no insurance, so that led me to accept a writing job with insurance with Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital. From there, I became Senior Communications and Marketing Officer with the University of South Florida Foundation, and then Vice President of Communications for the Pinellas Education Foundation.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, working for all of these nonprofit organizations put me in excellent position to eventually launch my own business. They allowed me to meet an entirely new network of people in the community and become known to an array of businesses. Some of them have become my clients in ScheiberStories.

I don’t think I could necessarily have done it had I gone straight from my journalism career. I needed to broaden my experience and contacts, and that opened the door when the timing was right.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I’ll return to the topic of the books I’ve written. Before the first one was ever published, I had about five projects that simply never got off the ground. Each seemed very promising at first but just didn’t work for one reason or another – whether in finding an agent or a publisher. And in one case, I passed on the project after spending additional time interviewing the subject and realizing it wasn’t a good fit.

But I always felt I could write books and kept looking for the right one. With Covert, the first literary agent I approached – an established veteran in New York City – passed on the proposal after sitting on it for several months. I recall him saying he felt it was best-suited as a newspaper feature and not a book. That was certainly discouraging, and it would have been easy to have been derailed by that or any of the others that didn’t happen. But that’s part of the process you have to accept. You have to be ready to keep pushing if it’s something you really want to do.

And a day after getting turned down by that agent, I made a call to another agent whose name had been passed on by a friend – and he loved the idea. Of course, that didn’t guarantee success. The book was still rejected by at least 10 major publishers over the next three months before finally getting picked up by Sterling Publishing – and that’s all it took to break through. Needless to say, it was very satisfying that Covert made a USA Today list for best books of 2008 and the New York Times called it “A Mob infiltration memoir for the Sopranos age.” My point is that rejection is often part of the game. It wasn’t fun or easy. But the experience taught me that you just need to keep plugging away and stay positive. You never know what might happen.

On a related note, my latest book is also with Bob Delaney, called Heroes are Human: Lessons in Resilience, Courage and Wisdom from the COVID Front Lines. It just came out this fall on City Point Press, distributed by Simon & Schuster, and honors the sacrifices of healthcare workers during the pandemic and offers insights into self-care and healing from the trauma they endured. Delaney is a nationally known authority on PTSD – a condition he developed during his undercover operation and then overcame. We tell the stories of nurses and doctors in the book, weaving in his perspective as we go. Our hope is that Heroes are Human will be a comfort and help to medical workers, and raise awareness of their experiences and bravery.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me, it’s knowing you told a story in a way that engages readers and did justice to the topic accurately and in an interesting and informative manner. Every story begins with that blank computer screen staring back at you – and, for me, writing is never just a breeze, where the words simply flow. Some stories come together more easily than others, without a doubt. But there’s always that initial challenge of figuring out how to start in the best way. Finding a strong lead and opening section has always been very important to me, as it is with most writers I know. And if you succeed in that, the stories always seem to fall into place. I might change or tweak a lead paragraph dozens of times before I’m satisfied with it. In the end, if you feel you’ve told a story as well as you can, you made your deadline, and the reaction from readers is positive, that’s a very rewarding part of the job.

I also mentioned playing music earlier, and that’s another creative pursuit that plays a big part in my life. In my band, Ocean Road, we play private parties, special events and festivals. And there are many rewards – doing your best to sound good individually and as a unit, and trying to make sure the client and audience are happy. If you hit both of those, it’s a great feeling. I also have been able to perform over the years with my wife and some of our kids, and that’s been tremendously rewarding as well.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.scheiberstories.com, www.heroesarehuman.com
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/dave-scheiber-03157812/
• Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/oceanroadband

Image Credits
PhotographybyAvery.com