Another New Car...
Another Writing Award

Robin today—a successful California writer.

Hard of Hearing Writer Meets Success

Robin Bailey gets a new car almost every week. BMWs, Jeeps, Mustangs, and Saturns—she's had them all in her driveway. Driving new cars is how she makes her living.

"That's right!" she writes, practically smiling through the letters of an e-mail interview. "I drive new cars and they pay me for it!"

Life wasn't always so sweet. When she was 13, Bailey started high school after an operation for ear infections that left her with a shaved head and a hearing aid.

Robin as a young girl—her hair hiding her hearing aids.

"Talk about miserable!" she says. "I didn't fit in...Teenagers tend to feel that way normally... but add hearing aids, and you are talking about hassles that you don't need."

She faces the hassles with spunk.

"I still educate people I work with, love, and meet on a daily basis," she says.

When she began to date in junior high school, she was especially nervous. She wasn't sure she should tell her date about wearing a hearing aid. She hid it with her hair. Then one day, he tried to kiss her on the ear—and the aid whistled.

"I told him it was my boyfriend alarm," she remembers. "He laughed and I explained everything ... It was no big deal after that."

Now Bailey is an award-winning writer.

She drives cars as part of her weekly "Along for the Ride" column that she writes for The Bakersfield Californian, in Bakersfield, California. She has worked for the newspaper for 10 years. In that time, she has won 15 awards, including four international awards and two awards for fiction. Now she is working on a novel about a female priva te investigator.

"I never started out wanting to be a writer," she says.

She was a saleswoman taking college courses at night when she learned that the newspaper needed someone to answer the phones. She checked out the phone system. It had 40-50 lines.

"I was nervous, but I knew I could handle it," she says

She continued taking college courses at night, and added a few newspaper courses.

As she took the newspaper writing courses, she faced another fear-she had to interview people.

"The solution? I used a tape recorder and turned it up full blast," she says.

When a position opened for a writer, her teacher and boss encouraged her to apply.

She didn't.

"I was too scared," she says.

But soon she began to reconsider. Finally she applied for the job and got it.

"I guess I am stubborn," says Bailey, "because I didn't let the fear stop me from trying something new."

Two things motivated her, she added. One was Lou Ferrigno, the actor who played the Hulk on TV many years ago. Bailey knew that Ferrigno was deaf, "but he always approached things 100%, not caring that he was hearing disabled."

The other was her managing editor, who was also her college professor. "He believed in me," said Bailey. "He pulled me aside and said I should apply...I guess it was at that moment that I started really believing in myself."