Meet Marcia Barhydt, March Editor of the Month

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing career.

I was a career flight attendant; I flew for Air Canada for 32 years. When I retired, I thought I’d find a job as a customer service rep. When I started going to job interviews however, I realized that many businesses knew very little about giving great customer service, so I started my own company doing customer service training for companies, for entrepreneurs. I also started writing a bi-weekly customer service article for a local online news source. Within about 3 months my editor asked me if I would free-lance for him. He then introduced me to a woman who was starting a digital magazine for women over 50, Timeless Woman, and I wrote a monthly article for her for 2 years.

 

When she closed her virtual magazine, I went online to locate other magazines that targeted women over 50. I found WE Magazine for Women and sent editor Heidi Richards Mooney some samples of my writing. Heidi asked me to start writing for WE as soon as I was able to. After a few months writing for WE, Heidi asked me to be the editor of “Women of a Certain Age.”

When did you first discover you enjoyed writing?

When I first started writing for Timeless Woman. It was such a gift to be giving free reign over what I wrote about – any topic really, so long as it applied to women over 50.

What are your favorite topics to write about?

I like writing topics that are of interest to women in their 50s and older, in order to let them know how much value they have. So many older women think poorly of themselves and I like to tell them through my articles for WE that we all still have so much value, so much to give to others.

What do you enjoy about writing for WE Magazine for Women?

WE Magazine is a great fit for me because you also target women over a certain age, in their 40s and up, so it gives me my own soapbox to write about issues that are important to us all as well as issues that are just fun for all of us. I also really like the format of WE. It’s so much like a hard-copy magazine, with leafing through all the pages.

What projects are you currently working on?

I like to have a couple of articles ‘in the bank’, so right now I have an article about Body Acceptance waiting to be posted and I’m planning on doing a piece about the book ‘Cinderella Ate My Daughter’ also.

What’s next for you?

Another book. I have one book now called ‘Celebrate Age’ which is a compilation of all the articles that I wrote for Timeless Woman. I may do something like that for the articles that I write for WE, as well as the articles I write for other online magazines.

I also have another book about three quarters finished, called “Loves Moonlight Walks on the Beach”. It’s about the real meaning of what some men put in their profiles on dating websites in order to attract women. Personally, I’ve never ever in my whole life had a partner who suggested that to me, so I think it’ll be quite humourous as I translate what men are really saying in their profiles.

Tell us about the services/products you offer.

I write marketing materials and website content for other entrepreneurs, mostly women, so their literature is captivating. I write in my client’s own voice by having her write her own words first and then I ‘fluff’ her words up. It’s important that her material be in her voice.

What do you do for fun/relaxation?

I read, I swim and I try to find time to play my piano. And writing is actually a fun thing for me to do!

What question would you like to answer that has not been asked?

I’d like women of all ages to know how much value we have, how capable we are at doing anything that needs to be done, how we can offer more and more as we age because we accumulate more and more wisdom, and how retirement from our mainstream career can open the door to doing what we’ve always dreamed of doing. We can all do that now!

How can our readers contact you?

My website is www.willowtree.ca, where you can buy Celebrate Age, my email is marcia@willowtree.ca and my website has links to all the magazines I write for.