Local Writer Profile: Lisa Duchene

Lisa Duchene is a local freelance writer who writes for both local and trade publications.

Tell me a little about yourself.



I am a transplant here, originally from Ohio by way of Boston then Maine, where I lived for 14 years. My husband and I moved here to Happy Valley in summer, 2005 so he could attend the Master’s/Ph.D. program in sociology at Penn State.



I love baseball, and was thrilled to see the State College Spikes debut last summer. I love to quilt (proud member of the Centre Pieces Quilt Guild), hike and bicycle, to grow flowers and vegetables, cook and read great books about all kinds of things. I also teach fitness at the Bellefonte YMCA and am so grateful for the members who come to my classes.



How did you get started in freelance writing?

 

I’ve never wanted to be anything but a writer, and ultimately an independent writer, so I studied magazine journalism and political science at Boston University, then worked for newspapers and business magazines for the past 14 years.

 

I switched — or made the leap, so to speak — to full-time freelance writing in July, 2005, when my husband, Craig and I moved to Bellefonte from Maine. I absolutely love what I do, even when I’m juggling multiple deadlines and staying up until the wee hours to get it all done.

 

What subjects do you specialize in?  Why did you choose those subjects?

 

I’m most interested in writing about solutions to environmental problems, especially solutions that are also viable business enterprises, because that fascinates and inspires me. I also write about passions; food, farming, baseball, quilting and gardening top that list.

 

But I’m really a “creative generalist,” in the sense that I find many, many topics interesting: science, music, art, people, health. I love to learn and I absolutely learn new stuff every day doing my job.

 

Who do you write for?

 

Town & Gown and Research|PennState are the ones you’ve heard of. One that you probably haven’t heard of is SeaFood Business, where I write every month about supermarkets and seafood. I also write for some specialized business magazines geared toward restaurant chefs, like FLAVOR and The Menu.

 

Tell me about your favorite assignments.

 

Can I tell you about two?

 

In August, 1995, I spent 10 days at sea in the Gulf of Maine on a federal research vessel, weighing and dissecting fish alongside scientists who were measuring populations of New England groundfish like cod and haddock. At the time, New England cod stocks had plummeted and the federal government was making fishermen tie up at the dock for a sizable portion of the year. I was the marine reporter at a small, local daily newspaper on the Maine coast that served fishing communities, so what these researchers had to say and what they did had a big impact on people’s livelihoods.

 

Anyone who’s visited Maine has probably stopped in at L.L. Bean in Freeport, which was one of the towns I covered as a beat reporter in the mid-1990s. I was assigned to find an off-beat story, so wrote about a local high school kid who every day during the hot summer dressed up as a lobster and walked up and down the crowded sidewalks in downtown Freeport, drumming up business for a local seafood restaurant. (I have a soft spot for mascots.) NPR’s Morning Edition picked up that story and it was a bit of a thrill to hear Carl Kasell talk about my lobster kid as a teaser before the top-of-the hour news.

 

What advice do you have for other writers?

 

Stay positive and determined. This work requires balance in several areas: a focus on what you’re doing, while paying attention to what’s happening in your areas of interest/expertise; doing the work while constantly marketing to find new work to feed the pipeline; as well as being both creative and managing the business of writing (contracts, fees, cash flow, etc.) Plus, you often juggle all of that in isolation, so it’s important to find moral support and sounding boards by networking with other writers whether in-person or online.