NOTE: DCP author Ted Berland has shared with us a five-part series about his life as a writer.  We hope you enjoy getting to know this prolific author who wrote The Diabetic Wine Lover’s Guide, published by Dudley Court Press in 2015.

I seldom think about it, but we professional writers are like rare birds.

In a recent Huffpost Books blog, William Dietrich, Novelist, Naturalist, Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist, wrote that the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 145,900 writers and authors among us. A quarter of the total are part-time, two-thirds of them are self-employed. That’s in our nation of 318.9 million (2014) persons. “Pollsters report that more than 80% of Americans would like to be an author,” he writes. “Most successful authors have some combination of talent, persistence, and luck.”

To which I say “Amen.”

No wonder the rest of the population does not understand us.

I have been a writer since I joined my high school’s daily newspaper staff in 1942. (Yes, daily. It was printed in-house by students learning to be printers.)

I find that many people cannot desire or even conceive living the quiet, solitary life of a writer.

I was once in restaurant with my father, just after I came home from 5 years in the U.S. Air Force. He introduced me to a friend of his, proudly explaining that I was a writer. The friend responded by asking, “Oh, and what do you do for a living?”

TDWLG, as we affectionally call this book (The Diabetic Wine Lovers Guide), is my 18^th solo book. I also have collaborated on other books with other authors. And published more than 100 magazine articles, plus a weekly Chicago newspaper column on dieting.

I work alone, on an 8-year-old MacBook Pro computer, my constant companion.

More later…

©2016 Theodore Berland /All Rights Reserved