White Living A Journalism Adventure
By Grant Lile
Lemke Ledger Staff
Sarah White, known as Sarah Glass while at the UA and before she was married in 2002, has been using her journalism talent non-stop since graduating in May 2000.
In the summer of 2000, White became a Dow Jones Newspaper Fund intern at the Gloucester Daily Times in Massachusetts. At the end of the summer she moved back to Fayetteville and worked at the Northwest Arkansas Times for about nine months as a designer/editor and, later, a copy editor. She left them when the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette opened a copy desk in Springdale (now located in Lowell). She was one of the first people hired on to the desk, which did both copy editing and design.
"It was kind of like being at the Traveler again," White said.
After about three years working for the Democrat-Gazette White decided to pursue another opportunity.
"Much as I love the newspaper business," she said, "I didn't want to work nights anymore."
Sarah began working as an editor at the University of Arkansas Press, where she edited around 20 books and supervised the production of a dozen or so more.
"That was a lot of fun because it was using the same skills as journalism but in a completely different environment," White said. "It was hard to get used to not having daily deadlines," she said, "but there was something nice about the slow pace as well."
From 2003 to late 2006 she also did a lot of freelance writing and editing and had steady work writing on "Guide to Knitting" for About.com.
"I learned to knit when I was really young and have always enjoyed it," White said, "And this site offered me a great opportunity to write a lot about something I enjoy and gave me an excuse to buy lots of great yarn."
By 2007, White was receiving so much freelance work she started thinking about leaving the Arkansas Press.
"It's not that I didn't like the work, just that I really wanted to be out on my own," she said.
The push she needed to make her mind up came in June 2007. She was approached to write a book about felting (a process completed after knitting) that would be published in January 2008.
Writing the book would require her to come up with a concept, design and knit all the projects and write the book in about six months. It was certainly something she couldn't do working full time, so she quit her job at the Arkansas Press in July 2007 and began freelancing full time while working on the book.
White's book, "Picture Yourself Felting Your Knitting," was released in January 2008. Since then, she has been busy writing for the knitting site as well as blogging about health
news on CalorieLab.
She still does occasional editing work for the Arkansas Press, writes occasional book reviews and does other projects as they come along.
"I'm pretty busy," she said, "but I really enjoy working for myself and don't think I'd ever go back to working away from home."
White is currently playing with a couple of different ideas for knitting and working on ideas for books she would like to write. She also is working on developing a Web site to help teach other people how to become freelance writers.
"I'm so busy with my day-to-day work I don't have a lot of time to think about the future, but I'd love to still be writing about knitting years from now, sharing this great craft with other people," White said.