[Writing It Real subscriber Tina Traster used a time of great change in her personal life to build a bridge from her work as a newspaper journalist to making money with her passion for writing personal essays. This week we hear from her on what writing in the new genre has meant.

At the end of her story, she shares one of the essays from her book Burb Appeal: A Collection of Humorous Essays, a volume that came from her regular newspaper column titled “Burb Appeal,” which she continues to write.

A New York State resident formerly from Manhattan, she wrote me:
When I proposed writing a column about my new life in suburbia, I could not have imagined that it would turn into a body of work, and would take my career in so many directions. I’d say, for sure, becoming a columnist has changed everything.
Reading Tina Traster’s writing story is affirming for those of us who venerate and have a passion for writing personal essays. –Ed.]

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On Burb Appeal, The Evolution of a Columnist
By Tina Traster

I was the quintessential city girl. Born in Brooklyn. Attended Boston University. Lived in London for five years, returned to Manhattan. I always loved jaunts to the country – but I identified myself as a pure, sophisticated urbanite.

As I explain in the first couple of chapters of my book Burb Appeal: A Collection of Humorous Essays, my life began changing a decade ago. My one-bedroom apartment turned into a love nest (with a lot more stuff) when I remarried. 9/11 undermined my ability to feel safe in a city I knew like the back of my hand. In 2003, my husband and I brought home a baby from Siberia.

With great trepidation, exhaustive research and an eyes-closed leap of faith, we bought a dilapidated, uninhabitable 1850’s farmhouse that absolutely nobody in their right mind wanted in 2005. The old farmhouse was on a mountainous road that looked more Catskills than suburbia; I fell hard. After a four-month renovation, not only the house, but I, was transformed. The desire to write about my life overtook my appetite for the kind of journalism I’d been practicing for 25 years.

A bit of background on my career. I began writing for magazines and newspapers in 1986. Occasionally I’d write a personal essay, though I made a living writing about other people’s lives. For years, I’d been writing for the real estate section of The New York Post. In fact, I carved a niche writing about folks who’d fled the city to live in the suburbs and exurbs. This was largely service journalism but to me it was a delicious exercise in voyeurism. I got to see how other city folks had survived/celebrated the transition. A few months after we moved up to Nyack, which is a Hudson River town about 40 minutes from Manhattan, I approached my editor, “How about a running column on my adventures from up yonder?” To my delight, he was game. And I was thrilled. This wasn’t the first time I’d suggested a column; back in the days when I worked at The Bergen Record 10 years earlier, I proposed an idea or two but got shot down. I admit to coveting those plum columnist jobs. I always thought of a column as a home, not too unlike a house itself. Within its structure, you figure out who you are. You exert your design and imprint in both spaces. Both are an expression of who you are and who you are becoming. One interesting thing about reading my column over the nearly five years it’s been running is that I can see my evolution up here. It’s a concise diary, so to speak.

My editor has always been relatively generous with the column. So long as it had some “real estate” related hook, I could write whatever I wanted. Surprisingly, I have never felt too hemmed in by this. I have written about nutty neighbors, bumbling town officials, a plethora of wild and domestic animals, and of course, my family. The column runs every two to four weeks, depending on space. And for content, I ask myself “What’s going on?” and there has always been something. Everything I’ve written about in the columns is absolutely the truth. I have gone out on a limb and angered people along the way but not to be gratuitous. Every column is a snapshot of my life; but it is always a representation of a bigger idea. Some columns are really a piece of memoir, like when I write about how my new country kitchen helped me find my inner cook, and how it did the same to help my husband find his inner baker. That column is a little piece about the dance of marriage.

Until a couple of years ago, I was writing “Burb Appeal” and juggling my usual load of paid free-lance work. I was pumping out four to six pieces a month, several for business publications. I was, in fact, earning a livable (just) wage. But by 2008, I could not keep going at the pace. And truthfully, “Burb Appeal” had empowered me to think about my career on different terms. I knew I’d have to let go of a lot of the paid work and “invest” in my career by writing. Writing memoir and essay. Participating in workshops and memoir groups. Reading memoir. Immersing myself in the literary world. I took a six-day summer session with Vivian Gornick at Sarah Lawrence College. I just began writing, writing, writing. And I began to discover the non-paid but very rewarding world of online and offline literary journals.

To my delight, my essays and memoir pieces began appearing in journals like Mamazina, The MomEgg, House Magazine, Whistling Fire, The Sharp-Tongued Woman, The Nervous Breakdown and others. I have read essays on NPR and an essay I wrote called “Love Learned,” which was about the difficulty I had bonding with my adopted daughter, has been anthologized in two collections: Mamas and Papas On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting and Living Lessons. I have a blog on the Huffington Post, in which I write more broadly about suburbia.

I used to bring a strong passion to many of the stories I covered as a journalist. Particularly those involving environmental issues or oppression of the little man. Writing about my life is not that different as I excavate and make sense of the past and the present. The publication of Burb Appeal: A Collection of Humorous Essays is an exciting milestone. I pulled together more than 40 of the essays, plus added some additional material. Publishing on Amazon Kindle is a challenge, but local media and social networking give authors new advantages and control. The book is also available in paperback from Amazon, and it is being carried by a handful of local bookshops.

The critical thing about “Burb Appeal” is that it gave me permission (and confidence) to think of myself as a writer, rather than a journalist. I still say “I’m a writer” with a quiver because I’m still stumbling my way through this vast landscape. I do have an agent and I’m working on a book anthology, but it’s in the early stages. For more than two decades I relied on the skinny Gregg Rule Reporter’s Notebooks. I always had stacks in my desk cabinet and I used them to report, to list, to think. I remember the day I began to lay out some ideas on a yellow legal pad. I felt as though I was venturing into a new frontier. As though literally the size of the page was a metaphor for thinking more creatively and expansively.

I don’t have a neat roadmap for the future, which is both scary and exhilarating. My column continues, and I am also busy marketing the collected essays. The practice of writing and rewriting essays opens doors – and it keeps my mind fertile and creative. At 48 years old, I believe I know enough about myself to be useful to others. One of the great pleasures of a regular column is feedback. “Burb Appeal” has sent hundreds of strangers to me, who share their stories, take issue with what I write, and commiserate. I have to admit that the circle of writing and feedback is a joy because I’m most interested in the human condition, mine or another’s.

Here’s one of the essays from my book:

The Write Place
Excerpted from Burb Appeal: A Collection of Humorous Essays

Four years ago, we left our Upper West Side co-op for many reasons. My husband needed a driveway. My toddler deserved a bedroom with windows. I had to get out of the kitchen — that narrow room, where, cramped in a window nook, I spent my days writing.

As Virginia Woolf said, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

I don’t write fiction, but I can say that Woolf, that champion of women’s rights, was spot on.

Without getting into the money part (that’s for another day), there’s a point when a stay-at-home writer can no longer share working space with a refrigerator and an oven. She begins to think about opening an antiques store or running for political office or even cleaning the refrigerator and the oven. Anything not to have to type another word.

Woolf would be pleased to hear that claiming a room of my own in a renovated old farmhouse in Rockland County saved this female writer.

The two-story house we bought is not large. In its raw, ramshackle state, the ground floor had a living room with a large hearth and a dark, low-ceilinged dining room with floors so tilted an office chair on wheels became a ride.

But there was also the “ahh” space. It was roughly 300 square feet, with high, vaulted ceilings, skylights and a wall of windows looking out on seemingly infinite woods.

The previous owner had used this space as a large country kitchen, though the farm sink was redder than Sedona and appliance knobs hung like a 6-year-old’s loose tooth. A long, pine table suggested many a Dionysian feast.

Back in 2005, any interior designer would have proposed transforming this space into the architectural must-have du jour: the “great room.”

There would be a kitchen island and counters with swirling stools where children would do homework while mom stirs soup. “And over here in this corner,” the designer might have said with a sweeping gesture, “is where you can put your desk and some bookshelves.”

Luckily, we never hired an interior designer.

What I wanted more than anything was a separate, dedicated space I could call my home office. Not a nook, not a portion of a room, but an entire room for my books, a rocking chair and a thick rug where I could fold into a downward dog to soothe an aching back. It would be my retreat for thinking and writing and daydreaming.

When we first bought the house, my husband and I walked around brainstorming how to lay out our living space. The living room would remain a living room. But the rest of the downstairs was up for discussion. The dining room was too big for a home office, the ceiling was low, and the view out of the small window was of a road.

I suggested we partition the “great room” into a kitchen and a home office. Both sides would have a wall of windows and skylights.

“What about a family room?” my husband asked sullenly.

“We’ll have to be a family in the living room, the dining room and the kitchen,” I told him.

He understood my desperation — obviously remembering how things turned out for Woolf.

Space matters. In this room of my own, I have grown into a different kind of writer. It’s where this column, which I consider offspring, was born. I have also begun writing essays and a memoir and blog entries; physical space has broken open a creative vein.

It’s also where I cobbled together a homespun book of old photos and archival material of my father’s years growing up in Colchester, Conn. He cried when I presented it to him on his 75th birthday.

In small, cramped quarters I wouldn’t have taken on that project. But now, with the quiet and the sunlight streaming through windows and the deer feeding outside my window, I had room.
I am forever grateful to column and essay writing for their contemplative and cathartic nature.