- Interviewing a high school student in Uganda.
beginnings
Hints of today’s me seem barely glimpse-able in my shy, nose-in-a-book younger self, the me who was always the teacher when my younger siblings and I played school, the me who followed the rules and got straight A’s. The nose-in-a-book part has held, but the follow-the-conventional-path part has largely faded away.
I didn’t grow up dreaming of being a writer. Mostly I planned to be a teacher (because that’s about the only occupation I’d encountered by age 10) or maybe a stewardess (because I didn’t get sick on planes). I didn’t know any writers. So I didn’t know becoming a writer was an option.
A few hints of the writer me of the future might be found in the spotty diary-keeping I started when I could write full, though simple, sentences on my own, back in the days when I still included my dad and my brother in my list of “boyfriends.” I also vaguely remember thinking, sometime around the age of 12 or 13, that maybe if I got married I could keep “Kami Rice” as my writer name (because I liked my name).
Easier to find in young me were hints of my curiosity and my interest in people, which feed my writing still. As shy as I was, I was still often one of the first to reach out to new students at school, and I eagerly corresponded with a Kenyan pen pal and with friends and cousins who lived far away.
easing onto the less-traveled way
From that not-so-auspicious beginning (as far as my current occupation goes) my path into the freelance writing world has been appropriately arduous, and there’s no indication that it will stop being arduous anytime soon. I studied journalism and applied communication (public relations) in college because I liked writing and liked people, but I didn’t really want to work for a newspaper or do p.r. So I didn’t apply for the obvious job choices once my B.A. was in hand.
My post-college path took me the twisty-turny way to where I am now. I’m inclined to think now, though, that that’s the best way anyway. After working for a DC non-profit and a brief stint on the Hill, I headed to Pennsylvania for a couple years of campus ministry and college student activities work. Courtesy of heading up concert booking for the campus, I acquired music industry contacts. Hmmm, perhaps here was a place for the creative part of myself that was still clambering for an outlet?
On the job on a New Orleans culinary tour for media folks. Not too shabby a way to spend the work day. 
I ended up back home in the mountains of northeastern Tennessee where I had my first go at barista-ing while I began booking concerts and road managing an independent musician. After 6-9 months of that, I finally made my way to Nashville, climbed aboard the Starbucks benefits train, and continued working around the fringes of the music biz.
“arriving” (as though we ever really do that)
But this writing thing just wouldn’t go away. So I began learning how one goes about freelancing. One thing led to another, and here I am: a Starbucksless (and, therefore, insuranceless) full-time freelance writer. As arduous and uncertain as freelancing is, I love it. I love its variety. I love constantly meeting new people. I love the challenge of diving into a topic I previously knew nothing about and learning enough to produce a good story. Most days, I even love the tension of being a businesswoman, not just a creatively thinking writer. I love loving Mondays, rather than only loving Fridays.
As each month passes I grow as a writer and encounter more of the stories I most want to tell more of. The four months I spent in Africa in 2007 working on stories for and about the people of that continent finally brought together two streams of my life: my interest in things international and my writing career. Since that time, I’ve been launched on the trajectory I want to be on as a writer. I headed to Haiti for a month in 2008 for more off-the-beaten path stories. Some of my favorite memories are of the moments that I was the only American for miles and miles around.
Post-Haiti, after a brief respite back in Nashville, I headed to London for three months of work and artistic exploration. And now, for the time being, I’m back in my Nashville base, excited to dig in here for as long as needed (though always open to the next bit of work abroad, of course!), working to tell the stories of those in my community who don’t get to tell their own stories. Increasingly, that’s the theme that wends its way through the work I’m most passionate about: telling stories that matter and
"Trying on clothes" at a Cambridge market. If I blog about it, does it count as work?
exploring the way telling a people’s stories changes what they believe about themselves as well as what others believe about them. Both that story and my own are works in progress.
