Joe Loya

I was scared that I might fail, but I wasn't afraid that I could connect with people again.

I had had a correspondence with this writer named Richard Rodriguez for a couple of years.

He's a great essayist.

And he was like, I'll get you work as a journalist.

You're already a writer.

You're a better writer than some people I know.

And he gave me all this confidence.

So when it came out, I had a pretty soft landing because I got gigs writing pretty quickly.

And I'm also a fortunate writer in that when I started writing,

People would come to me and say, can you write on this topic?

Can you write on that topic?

And so I wanted the rare writers who I didn't have to pitch a lot.

I didn't have to go and say, can I write for you?

It's just people would come, hey, Joe, this happened.

Can you write this?

Joe, this happened.

So I was fortunate when I came out to have that validation.

I published within three months.

in the Examiner, six months I was in the LA Weekly, and then the LA Times op-ed page.

So I was getting a lot of attention.