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My Writer's Journal

On becoming a writer: Part II

My hopes of becoming a writer for TV were dashed early on. After a typing test and an IQ test, I was offered a job by CBS-TV as secretary to a salesman who sold "time" to advertisers for commercial breaks. I considered it a dead end; boys were hired to work in the mailroom and eventually moved into management positions, girls were secretaries who got married. I followed the usual pattern, except that even after Baby #1 was born, I kept on working. The jobs didn't get any more interesting, and child care canceled out my minuscule salary.

After Baby #2 was born, I decided to stay home and write. My goal was to publish brilliant short stories in The New Yorker magazine. Trouble was, The New Yorker didn't understand that my stories were brilliant and rejected everything I sent. Finally I sold a story to a secretarial magazine, was paid $25, and saw my work in print--not print, exactly, but in the shorthand that secretaries used in those long ago days. It was a start. And that began a long, slow slog.

(To be continued.)
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