Jazz up your resume

I read a post today that quoted an individual who was identified as a poet and New Yorker contributer. Now “contributor” doesn’t necessarily have to mean published. I contribute to lots of people’s blogs by making comments. I’ve even contributed to the New Yorker by submitting original poems and suggestions for captions in their back page cartoon contests. None of these things saw print. But still I submitted to the magazine. Yes, I know, this is different from receiving “contributor’s copies” of a magazine that has published your work.
But, think about it, you could put ‘Writer’s Digest contributor’ on your resume if you’ve ever entered their writing contests. Or “O” magazine contributor if you’ve ever made a comment to the editor in any of the polls that magazine runs.
What other magazines are prestigeous to you? You can include them on your resume as a contributor too , if you write a letter to the editor of the magazine.
This week it is a little easier to tell people , “I’m a children’s poet.” because I was notified by a representative from the Arizona State Poetry Society that 6 of my poems had placed in their current annual contest. Wahoo! I’m feeling pretty good about that. Their annual meeting is this Saturday and I can hardly wait to find out which are the 6 poems that won. I know 2 cinquains won, which I think is pretty fabulous because I’d never written them before. I think I entered 3 poems in that category. Three of the poems were honorable mentions, so I’m waiting to find out which poems those were. Oh, it should be a good weekend.
My brother-in-law is coming from Rochester, NY for the weekend, so he can visit his dad, my almost 92 year old father-in-law. Should be an exciting, fun-filled weekend.
Oh, I got an email today from an editor at Writer’s Digest explaining “posthumous manuscript,” to me. She said that it is a manuscript published after the author’s death. (To me, if the work is published, it no longer is a manuscript, it is a posthumous publication.) But, if she has room, she might want to use my comment in their Letters to the Editor section and wanted to know if they had my permission to use my name and my words in that column. What am I stupid? I wrote back yes.