: About Me

Like many of you, I left a career to raise a child. Now that the dust is settling, I am beginning the long journey back. I recently landed a very flexible, very part-time marketing job. While I am truly grateful and enjoy this perfect re-entry position, I find myself dreaming about writing.

The dream started when the Ford Motor Company e-mailed thousands of Expedition owners to invite us to an essay writing contest to describe our Expedition Adventures. I found myself filled with a unique energy just thinking about writing my story. I also found my head full of doubt. Could I write something? Better yet, would it be worthy of winning? Then I remembered it. Years ago while at my first sales job at a radio station, I wrote copy for my clients. I was pretty good too as I soon began writing copy for other sales reps. That was it, I had to give it a try.

I wrote it, entered it, and just before I hit the "send" button I quietly said, "if I win, it will be my sign."

As one of ten first place winners, I was paid $3500. It is this essay that I will submit as my first article.

Was this win truly a divine sign? Armed with a few good creative writing books and a freshly fueled dream, only time will tell....

My passion is ...

Cooking.

I know too much about ...

Cooking.

My parents always told me ...

Don't take yourself too seriously.

My childhood ambition ...

To look like Goldie Hawn on Laugh-in and to marry Tom Jones. What can I say, it was the dawn of the television generation.

What I am reading/watching/listening to ...

I read what my book club tells me. Watch with shame, reality shows and listen to talk radio.

My first job ...

Counter girl at a pizza shop. Low pay, terrible uniform but the pizza was free.

My inspiration ...

My favorite books: Me Talk Pretty One Day, The Glass Castle and The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio which inspired me to enter the Ford essay contest. Looking at these titles, and what I watch and listen to, maybe its nonfiction I should aspire to even though my life is neither that tragic or that funny....Not yet anyway!

Creative Writing > Memoirs Memoirs: The most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you

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It was a crisp clear winter morning when in route to my office at a network television station, I had planned one quick stop. As an account executive, I had several advertising agencies that bought commercial time from me and on this morning I was stopping at one to pick up a tape of ads which needed to air the following day. While informing the receptionist of why I had come, the ad producer himself walked by. He greeted me by name and said he'd run and get the tape. I was flattered he remembered me. Part of working at an ad agency means dealing with countless number of sales reps such as...

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