Eight Days (a contest)
Posted by CM under Contest on Sat 19 May 2007
ell.
I have eight days to finish up a few projects here at work, pack up everything in my apartment, put it all in a car, and drive across the country. Yes, the eight days includes the driving time, and no, I can’t start driving until Friday night.
But my pain is your gain. I’ve never said what I do, and I won’t say it now. Not for another year, at a minimum. BUT I figure that you all can still post your guesses. There will be two lucky winners. One winner will be chosen at random. But the person who posts the job I most WANT–the most fabulously cool job that CM’s gotta have, and she’s an idiot for never having considered that career path–will also win.
What will you win? Your choice of any new release (and yes, I’ll spring for hard cover, if that’s the way your desires run), and a box of hand-dipped Grocer’s Daughter chocolates. I have been in love with Grocer’s Daughter since I first had them, and lusted after them ever since I saw these awe-inspiringly beautiful pictures.
Winners picked sometime next-next Monday (Labor day). Unless, you know, my car breaks down. ![]()









May 20th, 2007 at 6:26 am
I’m thinking it’s something legal. Are you a lawyer representing writers or something of that sort. Maybe your speciality is contracts??? Am I close?
May 20th, 2007 at 8:54 am
I pick writing! I pick writing! Glad Bev didn’t get to it first.
Alice
May 20th, 2007 at 8:56 am
I meant that as the job you WANT. Do we get more than one crack at it?
Alice
May 20th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Hm. I think you can get as many as you want. The random drawing will be among people, of course.
May 20th, 2007 at 10:17 am
I think you are an OPSEC agent.
As for what I think you’d like to be. . .well, my guess would be wife, mother, and bestselling author (of course!)
May 20th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Here are some of the guesses I made back during FanLit. And I still suspect some of them may be true:
CM is lashed to a desk somewhere far underground, forced to break North Korean spy codes with nothing but a golf pencil.
CM manages the snack bar of the shooting range at Dick Cheney’s undisclosed location.
Oh, a new one -
CM singlehandly writes The World Almanac and the Encyclopedia Americana each year. What? You thought those were compilations? Au contraire, mon frere. And here’s the big secret - when she doesn’t really know, she just makes it up.
As for what she would most like to be… I’m guessing it involves fine dining and travel and being critical. Michelin guide editor?
May 20th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Oh my god, Eve, Lynne, and Ericka, those are fabulous! I love it.
May 20th, 2007 at 11:28 am
And just to clarify: We’re guessing jobs I WANT, not jobs I have. In particular, Bev, I have to say that if my job was to review contracts–and it very well could be–I would never want to admit it to anyone. BORING.
May 20th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
3 Jobs CM wants:
Quality Control/Taster for Grocer’s Daughter
Book Critic
Fact Finder/Checker
May 20th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Wait a minute, Sara -
CM is already employed by me for items two and three on your list, albeit without pay.
May 20th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
I still think you’re the president’s mistress.
You’d make a great literary agent or editor.
May 20th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Well, *my* dream job is polishing the style of attack ads in Latin, to be written whenever they’re working on picking a new Pope. Nothing to deal with all day except my computer, a Latin dictionary, a search engine or two to verify the dirt, and Cicero for rhetorical inspiration. Unfortunately work would be rather sporatic.
If that doesn’t sound as great to you as it does to me, then I suggest:
-Detective in the Grammar Police
-Working for Jurisfiction.
-Giving tours to time travelers, in the style of the dinosaur safaris in Ray Bradbury’s “Sound of Thunder.”
May 20th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I think you’d love to be a literary agent/editor so you could give the rest of us our big break, plus you’d get to be on the cutting edge of fictional trends…paranormal? metafiction? erotica?…and read them for free.
May 20th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Oh, and for what you do right now? You chart and monitor the psychological responses of government employees as they are put under various stress tests in an underground laboratory.
May 20th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
And I see that I should have read the responses first, because India and I are on that same wavelength.
May 20th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
These are great! Keep them coming!
May 21st, 2007 at 6:08 am
Oh, jobs you want. Hmmm, author of course but that’s a given. How about literary agent or editor.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:29 pm
I think they should put her in charge of Avon Romance. No kidding.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:56 pm
You’re so darn experienced & capable, I’m worried you’ll beat me out for my dream job: driver of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile!
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:02 am
Oh, a job that CM wants? Hmmm…
By day, she is well-renowned romance author who gives Nora Roberts a run for her money with how she publishes books twice a month. By night, CM goes by her other name, “MC;” which stands for Madame Cameltoealicious where her crime-fighting ways berids women of the dreaded camel-toe and also gives pointers to men on how to perform sex like a romance hero.
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:44 am
My guesses have been taken! And more specifically than I was going to go. (I was going to guess current career=lawyer, desired career=writer)
Will have to think up something truly imaginative and come back…
Best of luck on the packing/driving/moving!! I’ve been there, and I don’t envy you. Hope everything zips right along! =)
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:06 am
You seem a little young for it, but I’ve got a notion that you are a judge of some kind, or possibly not a judge but working for the DOJ in some capacity. Maybe you’re a profiler? *grins*
As for the dream job… you can borrow my age-8 wish: being a slush reader at a big publishing house would be *the* coolest job in the whole wide world. I imagined a basement room, filled to the brim with manuscripts, a big chute to chuck the bad ones into, a little kitchen nearby stocked with lots of chocolate, and some good speakers for the music. There were *no* other people around to annoy me. I thought I’d spend all day, every day, just reading books, throwing out the bad and sending up the good. Dreams are good to have, eh?
Runner up: researcher for Time-Life books.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Dream job- erasing ignorance in all forms from the earth’s atmosphere. A Wonder Woman of information and knowledge, offering hope to us lay people.
May 25th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
You all have defied my imagination. I always thought she was a CIA lawyer (is there such a thing)? As for what your perfect job would be…runway model? So people would do all the makeup/hair/clothes stuff for you and all you had to do was stand around and look beautiful?
May 26th, 2007 at 10:55 am
I’m sure this is probably another one that sounds far better to me than anybody else, but a few days ago somebody suggested the need for a job called Mongol Librarian. You’d ride around to all the different libraries, shoot arrows at annoying patrons, and sleep in tents outside.