TITLE: Double Payment By cindy combs 07/26/05 |
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I would daily relive my own youth when I absolutely loved reading and relished writing assignments. I was shocked to see kids who behaved as though it was torture to do a short writing assignment or to read for fifteen minutes. Once when I excitedly told a middle school student how I had enjoyed doing research projects as a kid, she exclaimed “You’re weird!”
Soon my dog training career came to an end as I felt more and more that working with other people’s dogs made spending time with my pet feel like work. I’m also too much of an introvert to do anything like network and advertise myself. My enthusiasm for Exodus waned as well as I realized the futility of helping kids who didn’t want to be helped. I decided to go back to the work world, dreading as I did so the thought of going back to the same old thing.. As I plodded through the process of sending out resumes and contacting employers and getting no results, depression set in.
I began to make up stories about animal training and introverts who can’t seem to find success and write them up for my own therapy. Then I began sharing my story of how clicker training had transformed my aggressive dog into a fun and happy companion, saving him from someday being euthaninzed. Some would tell me what a talented person I was and that I should submit my stories for publication. I submitted a few queries and got nowhere.
To offset my rent, which was fast becoming an issue, I took on the project of organizing student files for Operation Exodus. Since I shared my apartment with their office, I had daily contact with students and staff. As I went through students work, I put faces to unfinished essays and book reports. I could picture Tiffany with a bored expression on her face or hear Jessica tell me I’m weird for liking books. Occasionally, something would jump out at me as being well written, and I’d rejoice at the thought that Reuben might someday go to college.
In my depression, I discovered that I truly loved to write and wished that I could make a living as a writer. Sometimes students would wait in the office after the program was over to wait for their parents. Usually I would write as they petted Bear or talked to me about their day.
I subscribed to a few writing lists and one day submitted an article on clicker training to I Love Cats and received an acceptance letter a few weeks later. I was elated at the idea that I would be receiving a check for $50 for something I wrote on a topic that I cared about.
One evening Tiffany was in the office waiting for her mom and asked me about that story I was working on. I told her with a smile that the editor liked it and was going to pay me $50 for it. Her eyes lit up, and she said “Do you think they’d pay me to write a story, too?”
Remembering the time I heard her exclaim "I hate writing!", I didn’t tell her about all of the stories that seemed to go nowhere and all the queries that had been rejected. I just told her it might be worth her while.
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