Advance Your Art: From Artist To Creative Entrepreneur

MEET BETTY BOLTE My career after high school began first with retail sales until a government clerk position opened up. Then I worked as a clerk for several years before becoming a secretary for corporate America. All those jobs involved words one way or another. Then I quit my job at IBM and started my own freelance word processing business in 1988. While typing manuscripts in Virginia, I would “clean them up” – editing the prose to flow more smoothly, a service my clients loved. Interestingly, my first client had me format (and edit) his thesis on rocket fuel. In 1994, I and my husband contributed chapters to books on using dBase V software for Macmillan Publishing. Now, he’s a computer software guy, but I am not. Yet I helped write chapters that essentially translated the technical phrasing into everyday language. Something I’m known for. After earning a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1995, I began freelance editing while also writing fiction—stories that will never be read but they were my training ground