Writing Is an Exercise in Lifelong Learning

Hi. Welcome to Bloom Anywhere. I'm Gwen Moran, a writer, editor, author, and problem-solver. My goal is to share information, ideas, and resources to help you overcome obstacles, reach your goals, and find more joy in life, even when things are messy. Thanks for joining me. (If you got this from a friend, subscribe here.) I'd love your feedback and suggestions for future topics. Please send me an email: connect@bloomanywhere.com.

Writers have a privilege available to few in polite company: We get to ask lots of nosy questions and then tell others’ stories far and wide. Sometimes, the stories are hard-hitting or heartbreaking. Other times, they’re more mundane. But you never know when a story is going to stay with you and even change who you are in some way, large or small.

Throughout the years, people have trusted me with their stories, both as a contributor to various publications and as a ghostwriter. Recently, I’ve been thinking about the work I have done and the lasting impact it has had on me. Again, some were stories of personal missions and grit. Others have been simpler—smarter ways to approach work or life. Here are a few projects that stayed with me and helped shape who I am today.

On Resilience

When my editor, Kate Davis (who has a marvelous new newsletter called The Mud Season—check it out here), moved to Fast Company—at that time (and still), one of my dream clients—and brought me with her, the first story she assigned me was about resilience. “6 Habits of Resilient People” let me dig into a long-standing fascination I had with some people’s ability to persevere through the most challenging circumstances.

This research led to a better understanding of how to build distinct areas of strength to draw on when times get tough. Career, family, friendships, spiritual life, hobbies—we are all multifaceted beings with different parts of our identities. When we focus too much on one facet, it’s hard to bounce back when we face a setback in that area. This piece changed how I thought about who I am and what matters, creating a fundamental shift in where and how I spend my time.

A Very Personal "Scoop"

When another editor landed at The Los Angeles Times magazine and reached out to see if I wanted to write a series of medical breakthrough stories, I initially declined. I didn’t really do a lot of medical writing at the time. But she reached out again and said some nice things, so I decided to take them on. One of the pieces was about cancer researcher Dr. Dennis Slamon and the drug Herceptin, which was being used at the time to treat HER2+ breast cancer. Before Herceptin was available. HER2+ breast cancer patients had among the worst outcomes. With Herceptin treatment, one infusion every three weeks for 18 months, they had among the best. Slamon was a delight and spent more than an hour in the interview with me and shared his vision for a world without chemotherapy—where targeted drugs would knock out cancer without so much long-term damage.

Fast-forward two years: I’m sitting in my oncologist’s office at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center in Manhattan. He is explaining my new breast cancer diagnosis to me. The good news? We caught it early. The bad news? It’s HER2+. When I told him that I knew what that was because Dennis Slamon had explained it to me, his face looked like I told him I’d just been jamming with Bruce Springsteen.

“You know Dennis Slamon?” he asked, surprised. Thanks to good doctors and good health insurance, I received Herceptin treatment in 2011 and 2012. Thanks to Dr. Slamon, I was well-prepared. Today, Herceptin is being used to treat a variety of HER2+ cancers. (The story of Slamon's efforts to develop Herceptin was made into a Lifetime movie with Harry Connick, Jr.)

Dinner on the Moon

The founder who inspired a story with a pitch he sent me made an impression. He was such a passionate advocate for veterans—something that is important to me as well. A few years after I wrote this piece for Entrepreneur (link to a reprint to avoid the paywall) about veteran founders, I reached out to ask him a question. I prefaced my email with “I’m not sure if you’ll remember me . . .”

His reply reminded me of one of the reasons stories matter so much. “Remember you?” he started, then went on to tell me that the producers of ABC’s “Shark Tank” had read the article and invited him to the show, where he secured a deal. His business soared, and he appeared in follow-up shows, too. “I think I owe you dinner—on the moon,” he wrote.

So Many Stories

There were so many others. The heartbreaking Family Circle piece about a New Jersey mother’s tireless advocacy to take on drowsy drivers after the man who killed her daughter after he fell asleep at the wheel was fined just $200. On a much lighter note, the time-blocking story I wrote for Fast Company helped me conquer my tendency to overschedule. The years I spent writing for Fortune’s Most Powerful Women program let me tell stories about women embracing their power, the challenges of working parents, and even women’s soccer.

I still quote the parables from Choose Not to Fail, a book I ghostwrote more than a decade ago, especially about people being in the “cheap seats”—no one, no matter how much they care about you, knows your situation better than you do. Another favorite is “digging the perfect hole in the wrong place”: if your effort is misaligned with the priorities of the person you’re doing it for, it doesn’t matter how good it is.

I realize that I’m fortunate to have a career I absolutely love. There’s nothing I’d rather do. I get paid to talk to people and to learn. What’s better than that?

What do you love about your job? If you’re a writer, what’s the story that stayed with you? I’d love to hear: connect@bloomanywhere.com.