Today we’d like to introduce you to Caron Golden.
Hi Caron, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
This is one of those happy circumstances that tech has made obsolete. I had an idea in college–UCLA–that I wanted to go into book publishing. Living in LA when the industry was in New York City meant I needed to get creative. At the time I had an afternoon job at the university’s law library. Not one of the cool jobs working the front desk where I could meet people but working for the librarian’s secretary in an office tucked away in the back of the building. After the secretary left for the day I’d have some tasks but basically was there to answer the phone. That gave me some free time to study.
One afternoon I pulled out the Yellow Pages, a thick annual yellow book back in the day that listed businesses by category with contact info. I looked up “Publishing” and began calling companies starting with A–not to get a job but for an informational interview. I ending up stopping at B because I reached a man who told me I wouldn’t be interested in his technical publishing business, but, he said, he shared a suite with the West Coast editor of Avon Books, who wasn’t particularly busy at that moment. Would I like to talk to him?
And my career started there. This generous person invited me to his office in Westwood Village, literally down the street from UCLA’s campus, and at our meeting told me he had just given an interview to industry magazine Publishers Weekly, and volunteered that he read all unsolicited manuscripts. Of course, he was deluged with submissions. I happened along at just the right time. He invited me to help him wade through them. He’d teach me what to look for and pay me $4 an hour. He also advised me to quit my law library job and work part-time at Hunter’s Books down the street to learn the business. He knew the store manager and made the introduction. She hired me and it turned out to be a great job I stayed at until graduation.
This man, Chuck Thegze, became my mentor in my early days. He advised me to visit New York during senior year spring break and made introductions for me to the top people in the industry. When I graduated I moved to New York and got my first job through one of those contacts as an assistant to a literary agent at The William Morris Agency. I was promoted to assistant agent and sold magazine rights to books we represented.
Eventually I returned to LA and four years later moved to San Diego. At that point I had slid into work as an editor and writer, starting with small community publications. I was the editor of San Diego Executive and then Women’s Times before I decided to go out on my own as a freelance writer and editor. One of my first gigs was with Copley News Service as a travel writer. I got to go to Australia, France, Canada and around the U.S. But I also took up other assignments in food writing and business writing. Later, with a passion for cooking and food, I launched a blog called San Diego Foodstuff to hone my food writing skills to get assignments from editors. It worked. I got assignments from The San Diego Union-Tribune and other local publications as well as Sunset and Saveur. And I joined a local radio show on food as a host as well as made appearances on KPBS radio. But much as I love journalism, you have to make a living and I had developed contacts with people who referred me to different kinds of organizations for marketing writing and national publications focused on technology and business. Over the years I’ve won countless writing awards from the San Diego Press Club including Best of Show for San Diego Foodstuff.
These days I’m primarily writing for The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Food and Home and Garden sections. It’s a delightful way of introducing readers to topics and people I’m interested in learning about. And I’ve also been working with elders on writing their memoirs.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It must be very rare to enjoy a smooth road over the course of a career. When I was coming up in the 70s and 80s at The William Morris Agency women were not exactly welcome in jobs other than secretarial. The successful women I came to know had to be very tough and extraordinarily talented. My male peers had no qualms about trying to sabotage me. But I was fortunate in having two bosses who advocated for me. Once I decided to return to Los Angeles the challenge was finding work outside of book publishing. I eventually landed at a corporate job reading the news and our team compiled and published twice-daily news summaries for the company’s top executives. Later a friend with a software company hired me as a technical writer. But six months later she took at corporate job and the company was dissolved.
At that point I was ready for a life change and moved to San Diego. I had to start from scratch and knew it would take awhile to find my niche in a new city. I’m basically a shy person but I leaped into doing a lot of networking–going to professional luncheons, doing informational interviews and just showing up wherever it made sense. It worked. I got a gig as editor of a community newspaper–the pay was awful but it gave me experience, introduced me to a community and provided clips and something directly relevant to put on a resume. That led to an unexpected job at a boutique PR firm writing press releases and other copy. I’m still friends with that boss–and she’s become a brilliant source for me for home decor stories–but she had to let me go when a client demanded to work with someone more seasoned in their industry–and I admittedly wasn’t. It was tough but led to my returning to journalism as the editor of a local business magazine. And I got involved with the San Diego Press Club, which introduced me to fellow writers I could hire–and later editors who could hire me or recommend me to their colleagues. Eventually I joined the board and became board president.
Every opportunity I’ve had was not just from working hard but in meeting people who saw my talent and potential and either hired me or recommended me to others who did. So much of my work has come from referrals. The biggest struggle for people in the media industry has always been dealing with the continual march of change. Some of it is due to technology (currently AI and social media). Some to industry consolidation. One of the worst was the impact of AB5, California legislation advocated by Lorena Gonzalez, which severely limited freelancing in all industries but hit freelance journalists and writers particularly hard. I’m one of thousands who lost work from this. But you keep on going… And keep staying in touch with colleagues and putting yourself in a position to meet others as well as help others. People connecting is the secret sauce that AI and bots can’t offer.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I tell stories. I like to think that I have the gift of communicating to people new to a topic in a way so understandably and engaging that they get it and become enthusiastic about the subject. It could be a person reading one of my newspaper articles about how to make traditional Turkish meals who didn’t even know what Turkish food is and now wants to roast and stuff an eggplant. Or it could be a CEO who could more easily make on-the-ground decisions about an unfamiliar new technology because I was able to interpret highly technical details into something comprehensible and connected to business via a white paper or trade publication. And now, along with my journalism, I’m working with elders who want to tell their full stories to their families. I help them elicit distant memories and weave them into stories that reflect their true experiences.
I’m proud of being someone who loves to learn and is a quick study, who loves to listen and loves to translate all that comes out of that into a story or book that contributes something worthwhile to a reader’s lived life. Circumstances have led me to having to become very versatile. I’ve developed expertise in some areas, solid working knowledge in others and intense interest in and enthusiasm for it all. Over the years I’ve written on food, home design and gardens, but also real estate, home building, technology, business and health care. I love that I was an early adopter of tech we now take for granted and able to turn that into an opportunity. Decades ago I wrote a manual and taught Disney executives among others how to use the Internet back when it was just being adopted. Later I taught executives around San Diego how to use social media at a time that few understood its potential benefits. It turns out that I’m a very good teacher, whether that’s in person or through my first love, writing.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success to me is finding your niche in life and building your world around it while helping others along the way. It’s not just about making a lot of money or gaining recognition, it’s also the delight of being challenged in ways that stimulate your mind and curiosity, and being engaged with people whom you enjoy and help make you both smarter and a better person.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://goldenwriting.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carondg/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carongolden/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carongolden/
