We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Melissa Herrera. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Melissa below.

Melissa, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with what makes profitability in your industry a challenge – what would you say is the biggest challenge?

I mostly used writing as an outlet in my youth. I didn’t take it seriously until I hit 40. As a SAHM of 3, writing for profit was out of the question. The 90s hid moms away with no forms of social media contacts like today. It felt like a lonely place to be. When I realized I could use social media to have more writing opportunities, the world opened up to me. I started a blog in the aughts and went on to column writing and eventually wrote two books.

There are locked doors in the literary world and unless you have money to spend on representation, your chances to succeed are low. Even then it isn’t a guarantee. Profitability in writing is hard to come by unless you can stay sharpened on the newest ways to contact and pitch. Most of us labor in obscurity.

As most writers can verify, we send pitch after pitch after pitch that gets tossed in the wasteland of computer terabytes. It can wear on the soul as well as the pocketbook, which is why we maintain other sources of income. I wish the process of pitching wasn’t so exacting, There’s so much talent out here and the demands for precise pitches turn many of us away. I understand the narrowness of the expectation, but if the process was made more accessible we’d be able to read the absolute genius hiding out here in the rurality of this big country.

Melissa, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have always been a writer, a poet. I read huge books at a very young age and began to write long pieces in elementary school. As I approached my 40s, after raising three children, I was given the opportunity to write a weekly column for a newspaper. I ran with that platform knowing that it’s short, impactful form was meant for me. I began by writing about tips and tricks on couponing and saving money by thrifting. I moved from that into writing about my life and family, cooking, politics, immigration, and combating racism in a small town. My husband is from Mexico and we have been married for 35 years.

I have written two books. One was ghostwritten (The Prostitute’s Daughter), but the most important one to my life was the biography I wrote about my husband, ‘TOÑO LIVES.’ His life story needed to come to life and it’s a miracle he’s still alive today. It was very hard to write because I wrote in first person, detailing every grueling aspect of his existence from abuse, living on the streets as child, arriving in America undocumented in the belly of a train. I pride myself on authentic detail and making sure the reader feels like they’re inside the story.

Publishing the book was trial and error. I completed a writer’s residency in Oaxaca, Mexico (where he was from) and wrote the bulk of the book there. I self-published and working through that process was eye-opening. My children helped me immensely. All college graduates, they helped me organize it, design the book jacket, and got it online so we could go public and publish. There is still so much about the book I’d like to reformat, but it was the best we could do.

I have tenacity, grit and turn things in on time with minimal errors. My goal is travel writing, writing meatier pieces in distant locales, I’ve written and sent in essays from all over Mexico.

My strengths are essays, local pieces and far-flung topics in diverse spaces.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In freelance writing, especially in my case of opinion column writing, you get feedback from all sides. I have always had excellent, professional editors at the newspaper who most likely don’t tell me about everyone who sends an email that disagrees with my opinion. It’s built my character and fortitude over the years.

Last summer as my husband was going through recovery from quintuple heart bypass surgery, I received a letter in the mail at the house we’d recently moved to. Sometimes my own heart flutters when I receive unknown mail, but I opened it and my heart sank. It was a letter written by someone claiming to be the president of the American Nazi Party in a neighboring county. They said some very horrible things, words meant to cut, and gave me a lecture on the merits of Hitler. They evidently read my column every week and didn’t like something I’d said about Hitler.

Chills. That’s what I had. What year was this? What was happening?

I was a bit shaken until I reported it to several different places, talked to my editor and my family, then sat down to write my next column. I could have let that letter scare me into not writing what I wanted to write about, but I’d built a trust with my readers. They didn’t always agree with my opinion, but they heard me. For me it was important to continue writing as I always had. I learned very quick that I would never let anyone scare me into not writing what I believe.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

In the beginning of my writing career, I wrote what I thought people wanted to hear. I quickly learned that writing what I wanted was what they wanted. I had to unlearn what I thought was pleasing to people and write from my own voice. That has grown even bolder as gather years under my belt.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thebargainhunter.com/news/col-melissa-herrera
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• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/missy.herrera
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