P / P Master Class is a series of writing advice for aspiring writers.

I know there are some writers that, from the outside, make their careers look easy. But attaining, and more importantly, maintaining a professional writing career, whether it be creative writing, nonfiction or journalism can take decades.

I personally began writing as soon as I learned how to write my letters and structure sentences, around the age of 5 or 6 years old. By the time I was 8, I was filling drugstore spiral notebooks with imaginative short stories. The stories ranged from innocent love stories, to fables to scary vampire tales. Once the internet became accessible to the public (1998 or so), I began blogging and building my own websites that functioned as glossily designed journals where I could digitally share my thoughts and youthful perspective of the world with anyone who wanted to connect with my writing.

Nonetheless, my writing career didn’t begin to gel and open professional doors until 2010 when I created a music blog called, TPR-Mag.com, which covered experimental, shoegaze and underground psych rock music from North America, Asia and Eastern and Western Europe.

Stroke of luck – you can network at any age.

In 2009, I moved into an old, refurbished loft building in Brooklyn, NY filled with dozens of young, ambitious, diverse people who were jump starting their creative arts, fashion design, performance and writing careers. We were a community and threw parties, spending as much time as we could together, bonding, making music and using our live/work spaces to craft and further whatever creative pursuits we were chasing at the time. It was a really fertile (and affordable) time in New York City. My neighbor, Isabela Raygoza (who has gone on to edit for MTV, Audible and is currently a regular writer for Rolling Stone), got a job as music editor for Remezcla.com, the largest English language Latin American culture website in the United States. Isa offered me a job as a writer and I jumped at the chance. Remezcla gave me a name for myself as a popular niche writer who covered underground music in Central and South America.

Respecting your paid opportunities.

When I created TPR-Mag.com (TPR was short for a small record label I started called The Process Records in 2008), I made sure I didn’t cover Latin American music on the blog because I wanted to respect my job at Remezcla. I know that seems like a very simple decision, but respecting the boundaries of your paid work opportunities is incredibly important. Continue reading →