Writing Gigs/Gorgeous Autumn

After a year off as senior editor of Winds of Change, I finally landed a dream gig. I am now the editor at Cultural Survival Quarterly. This is a wonderful gig! Not only do I get to edit articles that relate positive information about North American indigenous people, I now edit articles about the world's indigenous peoples! In fact, just the other day I was given a poignant story about the indigenous people who live in the Samburu East district of Kenya. The captions to the photos had to be cut down to a tight 150 words while still retaining the voice of the Samburu speaker. He was trying the best he could to explain how elephants were actually beneficial to the region. Poor guy, he has to tell people that information! Yes, yes! It is not an intuitive fact for block-headed people! It is also not an intuitive thing that indigenous people are often offended by Columbus Day. For that holiday, I had to ghost-write a response for my executive director. It was a pretty simple thing to write.

Shortly after I took the Cultural Survival gig (which is a contractual, part-time job), I was offered a "longish" editing job at Tribal College Journal. I already contribute to them regularly and they pay well, but this is for a particular project and the publisher contacted me directly. It starts sometime in November.

In the meantime, my position with Cultural Survival allowed me to finally quit that online academic writing service gig that I HATED! Plus, with my grad classes, it was so much easier without those deadlines hanging over my head. That gig was especially painful because I was writing college essays and research papers for lazy grad students who had the audacity to snap at me if something wasn't to their liking and the support service really, truly sucked.

Writing gigs are funny things. You are asked (at least I am) to give them a quote, of which I am never really quite sure. The question is really: how much are you worth? This, no one can answer but you. The other day I met with an Indian woman-friend (Yakama/Colville) for lunch to discuss a book we are working on together. Anyway, my co-collaborator is a Dartmouth undergrad/Harvard grad writer. How impressive is that? Yet, even she was curious about how much she could ask for in terms of a writing salary. She had been approached by a company who asked her how much she charged for her services. She, too, was actually hesitant to ask for what she is most definitely worth! We must get over this! We really are worth more than we believe.

In addition to all my writing projects, I have had the most wonderful fall! I have been hiking every weekend in RMNP or in the Indian Peaks area. What a gorgeous showing we had this year of aspen leaves and fireweed and cottonwood! And, the final weekend in October, I am flying to Socorro, New Mexico to watch the sandhill cranes and snow geese in their annual migratory flight. We are also going to White Sands, NM. Then, come November, I'm off to SF to visit my sister and friends.