Greetings from the gig economy, I know it’s been awhile. I’m holding down three distinctly fun and remunerative part-time jobs now. I don’t know how long it’s been since I was this happy but probably at least since I could go to summer camp. I teach several subjects two days a week, narrate audiobooks of course, and I also picked up the strangest piece of work, writing for a local magazine. For which, I’m stunned to say, I won a writing award.

Yeah, about local things. As in, here in the Alleged Real World.

Write Some, Earn Some

The publisher is a conglomerate, Best Version Media, which has a neighborhood magazine for over 1,200 towns and suburbs across America and Canada. I am paid for 10-15 hours of work per month. I pick a person or family to profile in the cover article, plus one to two smaller articles about pretty much anything I want, plus a calendar of upcoming events. I never dreamed anyone would pay me NOT to hear about dragons and Despair, or miracles and monsters, but there it is.

This has been a GREAT job, especially for My Lovely Wife and me as partners. Dorie jumps on ideas as they occur to her. I have a stack of stuff near my desk to pull from whenever I need it. If we review a restaurant or museum, she comes with and takes the photos (yes, counts as a date, absolutely). I scan the research she prints out, add a few dad jokes and boom.

Win Some

I’ve been privileged to win awards in my other two storytelling vocations, as a teacher and narrator. But I never expected that my writing would ever be “there”. Certainly not my writing about the world everyone else knows as well as I do.

Every six months the publisher runs a contest for all Content Coordinators with an Amazon gift card as the prize. I submitted my profile of Evelyn Swenson, an incredible creative force who is still singing, directing and composing at age 95. The contest organizers said it was tough competition (hundreds of entries), but they picked mine. So I get this cool award symbol under my work email signature, and Dorie gets the Amazon gift card, the very definition of a win-win.

Here it is:

In Sum

It’s vital for authors, especially indies, to have support and validation for their work, including a writing award. Writing has never seemed like work to me. I never regarded myself as a true writer, just a chronicler of events no one else had seen. Splitting hairs? Maybe, but now I have the additional satisfaction to see writing for which I’m already paid earn some credit from strangers with no skin in the game. Lots of outlets in the world for writing gigs like this. Special thanks to John Riddle, the inventor of I Love to Write Day, for alerting me to this opportunity two years ago.