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My First Job

Sunday, February 5, 2017 3:15

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(Before It's News)

A commercial for McDonald’s claims they’re striving to be the best first job for people by offering college scholarships and high school completion assistance to their employees. That made me remember my first job, which was the neighborhood Dairy Queen… and I thought of all the lessons I learned there.

1. Mistakes can be a good thing. If we made the wrong kind of sundae, the owner/boss encouraged us to put the mistake in the walk-in freezer… and we could eat it later. Of course, I caught on quickly. I’d deliberately make a hot fudge sundae when they really wanted a strawberry one. “Oh, I’m sooo sorry. Just a minute and I’ll make you another one,” as I scurried to put away my treat–to be eaten later on.

Perhaps you’ve veered off into another genre while wading through a WIP?

Going off-track might inspire a new project. Maybe you accidentally

deleted part of a piece? Having to rewrite it might give it a freshness it otherwise wouldn’t have.

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photo by pexels.com

2. Sometimes people are wrong. When I got the job (I was 15) my parents were sure I’d get tired of chocolate since I was going to be surrounded by it. I was (and still am) a serious chocoholic. And Mom and Dad were wrong. When things were slow, I’d take a spoonful of nut topping and dip it into the hot fudge warmer… and gobble it up. Making milkshakes and concretes and sundaes did nothing to make my chocolate addiction dissipate. Working a full shift meant we got a free lunch, and lunch at this DQ meant a burger or hot dog, fries (covered in Cheez Whiz), a drink (which to me meant a malt, because you drink a malt, right?) and dessert (a sundae).

Is it any wonder I now have food issues?

So you send off a manuscript or an article or a story to an editor or a publisher
and they don’t like it. They might be the wrong person/house for your work.
Send it off, over and over again, until you find the right one.

3. Keep trying. I never could get the signature Dairy Queen curlicue down. I made thousands and thousands of sundaes and cones, would let up on the handle of the ice cream server as I twirled the cup or cone… and it didn’t ever look like it was supposed to.

Your book isn’t published? There’s a magazine/anthology you keep submitting to,

but you haven’t made it yet? Keep trying. Don’t give up. I thought I’d never get published

in a romance anthology, yet after some rejections (one was even a projectile rejection–quite ugly), I finally succeeded.

What about your first job? What did you learn from it, and how can you connect your lesson to the craft of writing? Chocolate-coated minds want to know…

Since working at Dairy Queen, Sioux has had many jobs including a (literal) pill factory and a position selling pre-arranged funerals–her favorite job by far is teaching. She’s currently working on a middle-grades historical fiction manuscript. If you’d like to read more, go to her blog.

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Visit WOW! Women On Writing for lively interviews and how-tos. Check out WOW!‘s Classroom and learn something new. Enter the Quarterly Flash Fiction Contest. Open Now!

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Source: http://muffin.wow-womenonwriting.com/2017/02/my-first-job.html