FARMINGTON – For Linda Greenlaw, opportunity is the single most important word in the English language.

“Opportunity knocks. It does not let itself in. You have to recognize a good opportunity, get yourself off the couch and open the door,” Greenlaw told the those attending the Women’s Business Center’s orientation of online virtual workshops Tuesday. While speaking on achieving our dreams in small business, she tried to give a little inspiration from her own experiences.

This fisherwoman/author who says she’s never had a real job, never filled out a job application and does not have a resume, admits her experience is unique. She has been compensated for what she produced through sheer hard work, determination and persistence, Greenlaw said.

A commercial fisherwoman since she was 19 years old, she needed a summer job to get her through Colby College. Greenlaw, who lived in a rural area of Maine where jobs were not readily available, said she had to be innovative in creating a job opportunity. Fishing her way through school then turned into fishing year-round and now she’s lobstering. While being hard work, she likes it, but whether it’s fishing or writing, she said, it takes discipline.

“You need to breathe, think and eat your work,” she said. “You have to engage yourself in what you are doing. I don’t believe that good things just happen. I believe that good people make things happen.”

Greenlaw also said that she possesses the ability to shift gears, even reinvent herself on a couple of occasions and expects that she will have to do that a couple times more before she retires.

People, she said, recognize her as the woman who survived the perfect storm. While at the pinnacle of her swordfishing career, the author of the “Perfect Storm” wrote what she called a generous portrayal of her that changed her life. She then started getting invitations from publishing houses to write her own book.

While she was an English major in college and could put a sentence together, she had no desire to write a book. But after four publishing houses called she realized the opportunity being given to her – all she had to do was open the door. Following 365 days of sustained effort, she said, her first book, “The Hungry Ocean,” was released.

The book title for her, she said, exemplifies her success which she doesn’t measure in terms of money or pounds of fish caught but by the way she feels at sea. She’s passionate about fishing. The ocean, she said, has the ability to totally consume and she has been consumed by it. That feeling, while at sea, is her greatest success.

Although she would rather fish or bike than write, she has a new murder-mystery ready to be released in June and has just signed a contract to write two more books to make it a series.

Regarding risk taking in business, Greenlaw said writing isn’t a financial or health risk, like fishing, “but I’m putting myself on the line, my energy and emotions. I write something and then ask people to look at it and then ask what they think. It’s difficult not to take success or failure personally.”

Whether it’s fishing or writing, she said, she’s often asked what it’s like to be a woman in a male-dominated world. Her answer is that she’s not dominated; gender is not a factor.

“I don’t want accolades for being the only female. A good fisherman, a good writer, good person, good friend – these are my accomplishments. I am no more proud of being female than of having brown hair. Those are not my accomplishments,” she said.