The Scribe Life

~stretching~

I just woke up. I didn’t mean to fall asleep but…hey, it just happened. My phone woke me up and it was a co worker telling me that he lost his assignment and didn’t have any information about the event he was supposed to cover in the morning.

“Assignment dismissed,” I told him. “Now go get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Last night I hung out with another one of my co workers. He’s my age and his dream is to become a screen writer. He shared with me about his troubled past where he had so many BS jobs and how grateful he is to be working toward his dream.

“Winter 2003,” he told me as we huddled around a dimly lit candle and allowed the mellow sounds of Stevie Wonder to relax us after a very long day. “That winter was the worst ever. My car broke down and I had no money to get another one. The love of my life called me and told me she was getting married. I got fired from my job, evicted from my apartment and I lived in a hotel for a while trying to make ends meet.”

I shook my head in amazement.

“But look at my life now,” he continued. “Last week I was staying in a hotel on Park Avenue in New York interviewing Jet Li. I saw Leo Dicaprio in my hotel, man. I was sitting there amazed at how much my life has turned around. And I’m making it by using my talent. Shit…that’s amazing to me.”

We’re both grateful and the feeling is widespread around our office. I’ve been told many times that the people who write for our magazine move on to bigger magz like Essence and BET.com, Vibe and Black Voices. All the same mags I tried to freelance for but rejected me.

“Don’t worry,” my editor told me one day as we flipped through magazines and I showed her the ones who had rejected me. “You’re a much better writer than most of those magazines have. With your style, you’ll probably end up at Essence sooner or later. Those other mags just weren’t a part of your destiny.”

Although I’ve been at the magazine for over a month, it just hit me..I feel like I’ve found home.

Although people are people everywhere and ofcourse their will be little squabbles every now and then, for the most part we have a good team and we all have to depend on each other to do our jobs.

If the writers don’t write their stories, I can’t fill the editorial calendar. If I can’t fill the editorial calendar, the copy editors can’t edit them and forward them on to the graphics team for layout. The graphics team can’t work with me to make sure all of the photos are correct and that the important stories are run in a timely manner if the process doesn’t start correctly.

We have a little more than a handful of writers who work tirelessly day and night to produce. The single men have it the hardest because they can be called at any time day or night to hop on a plane and fly all over the country on assignment and this can happen once or twice a week. This seems glamorous at first thought but the reality is they are staying in great hotels and meeting celebrities and top business people across the country but they also have to come back from each trip with at least 10 stories for each day they were out of town. There’s no room for being star struck or lazy.

So that means instead of enjoying the comraderie of women’s business leadership conference, we have to bombard the business leaders to get interviews and photos. Instead of enjoying the exciting atmosphere of NFL games we have to be fierce in interviewing as many players, officials and fans as we can in order to meet our requirements.

“I’m getting a tatto on my stomache that says ‘Scribe Life’ one of my male co workers announced yesterday.”

We all laughed.

They are always having some wild conversation like, ‘Which movies or shows with Black characters were originally intended to be played by whites?’ after a discussion about how the 9/11 movie’s lead hero was played by a white man when the real hero was Black.

“Martin!” My fellow Cancer scribe shouted out. “That was originally a white show but we persevered.”

“Amistad!” Another co worker announced. “That was supposed to be a story about white slaves but they changed it to hold the Black man down.”

They LOVE to place bets on album debuts and their record sales. When Outkast dropped their new album their was an $85 pot for the person who guessed the closest number to their opening week recorded sales.

We clown a lot and they tease each other just to start an office wide debate.

“Dark skinned Black women can’t succeed in America!”

“Everybody knows that God is a white man.”

“You’ve only seen the Color Purple ONCE?! You ain’t Black!”

One of our scribes had a phone interview with Jaleel White (Urkel) today. When he got off of the phone he said, “That man is PISSED that everybody thinks he’s dead.”

When breakthrough artists stop by the office to be interviewed and have their pictures taken, one of our scribes loves to make them stop by the editorial office and sing a song for us. LOL!

Wow.

Remember when this year started I was feeling like this would be my year? Remember when I got the restraining order against my children’s father because I couldn’t take his abuse anymore? Remember when I got my first feature story published in the Miami Herald? Remember when I finished my first bio for Trick Daddy’s new group, The Dunk Ryders? Remember when I left the security of my cushy job at the private school to chase my dreams and ended up losing my job after only two months?

Man…

Life got hectic. I was in the hospital on my birthday. I prayed everyday for a breakthrough but my kids never went hungry.

I came up here hoping for an administrative job but happened to find a magazine that I thought was cool and they offered me a job on the spot.

I really didn’t know how I could ever be in a position to go after my dreams because I felt like I had to give up on them in order to be a good mother to my kids.

I didn’t.

I didn’t.

God has rewarded my obedience to Him by giving me the desires of my heart even though I messed up time and time again.

I may be flaky but I know the SOURCE of my success and happiness.

I know who truly loves me and guides me when I can’t find my way.

I’m grateful God and you know my heart. You have led me to a well of opportunity and young journalists who are hungry like me and respect me enough to receive correction from me. I learn so much from them. Their vibrancy is contagious and I can’t wait to see the day when each of us joins the panels of professionals we admire instead of writing about them.

It’s gonna happen.

We are all well on our way

God bless our publisher for giving us all our first chance and God bless us for daring to dream and take action.