I joined IWOC more than 40 years ago at its third meeting and was a member until about five or six years ago. I’m now 90, and the last thing I want or need is another writing assignment. But – and it’s a big but – IWOC was my professional home for many years and a seemingly endless source of helpful, smart people who helped me figure out how to find gigs and then how to actually do them once I’d landed them – also how to move from typewriter to computer. Some assignments that I can trace directly to my IWOC membership and colleagues’ suggestions/recommendations:

Ghostwrote a huge, full-color, prize-winning, coffee-table, centennial history of the Union Leage Club (found at my third IWOC meeting)

Ghostwrote a prize-winning fire prevention and survival book for the Chicago fire commissioner that was published by Barnes & Noble back when B&N still published books (second IWOC meeting)

Wrote all customer-consumer contact communications (letter and online) for VISA-First National Bank of Chicago, an assignment that lasted three+ years – from that came similar assignments with Colgate, Hills Foods, Quaker, McCormick Spices, Dole, Coca-Cola, and a half dozen more.

Wrote policy/procedures and crisis management manuals for several large, national corporations

Wrote the undergraduate and graduate course catalogs for Roosevelt University

Wrote the campus life and course catalog for Harrington School of Design

Taught “Writing for Managers” at Columbia College and “Editing for Writers” at Roosevelt University

Bought Adams Press, a production company for small presses, and ran it as a family business with my wife and son until their deaths

Produced a process-engineering book (including a year-and-a-half-long Skype working relationship) with and for an author in Belgium, who provided my wife and me a trip to his home

Became close, lifelong friends with many, many writers, including IWOC’s first president, as well as writers all across the country

Learned, as three-time IWOC president, how to build a leadership team and run effective meetings, which is invaluable for client meetings

Led IWOC to join with other creative organizations in opposition to censorship of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses by WaldenBooks

Represented IWOC at meetings of the National Writers Organization in NYC and DC

Staffed the IWOC booth and showed my work at Printers Row Lit Fest and at American Booksellers Association convention in DC

Learned how to walk away from assignments for which I was not suited or that promised a lot of headaches for little return.

Was it all worth the price of membership? Absolutely! I eventually joined other local and national writers organizations, but IWOC was by far the most helpful to me and my career.