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Thursday, July 13, 2006
Aspiring writer gets her wish
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
She sported designer handbags. She drove an SUV.
Nanette D. Massey lived well. Her forte was selling stuff, and she hawked goods for various companies for many years until she lost that closer’s edge.
Other jobs came and went. None lasted — buyouts, layoffs and in some cases, Massey’s own doings led to their demise. Unemployment benefits dried up. She ran out of options.
She became homeless.
And that may have been the best thing that’s ever happened to the Norcross woman.
You may have read about her. Two years ago, she wrote a first-person opinion essay about becoming homeless for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s @issue section. Response was overwhelming. She even landed a job as a data entry clerk with a firm in Duluth.
“All I did was share myself,” she told me Wednesday. “The article left people free to have their own individual reactions to homelessness and for many, it was very meaningful to them.”
For Massey, the essay helped her realize something friends had suggested for years: Pursue a career in writing, they’ve told her. You have something to say. The New York native has always kept a journal. Now approaching 40, she still has in her possession entries that date back to her high school days.
After the AJC article ran, Massey began freelancing for the Sunday Paper. She’s also submitted prose to Essence magazine and other publications.
Last April, though, she hit a bump in the road, one of her own making. She got canned from her data entry job due to excessive lateness. Massey admits she took advantage of friendships she’d formed with the company brass. Timeliness stopped being an issue.
So after bunking with friends, Massey has moved in temporarily with a relative in Columbus. She’s working day jobs through a temp agency till she lands something more to her liking.
Losing the data entry job may have been the second-best thing that’s ever happened to Massey. Now she’s trying to arrange her life so that writing, her first love, is a top priority.
A few weeks ago, she contacted the Tom Joyner Morning Show, a nationally syndicated program that airs locally on Atlanta’s Kiss 104.1 FM. She described herself as an aspiring writer. She sent copies of her work and told them she needed a computer.
“I sit and write long-hand on a [note] pad during the day and use the library computer at night to research and edit my work,” she wrote. “Please help me … give voice to those who would normally go unheard.”
On the July 5 broadcast of the Joyner show, Massey was crowned the weekly “Christmas wish winner.” Her Dell laptop computer and printer should arrive any day now.
“She wrote us a beautiful, touching letter,” said Sherée Zeisler, a producer on the Joyner show. “There is a passion there and she has an obvious talent.” Massey doesn’t think she’s suited for a 9-to-5 gig. She’d like to work as a nanny or live-in assistant in exchange for free room and board. That way, she can concentrate on her first love.
“The bottom line is that I am a writer,” she said by phone. “I don’t even tell people I am unemployed now. I say that I am a writer because that’s what I am. “I didn’t go through the homeless experience for nothing.”
You can contact Nanette Massey via e-mail: n6785790880@yahoo.com.
