2024 Personal Essay Writing Challenge: Day 1
Here we go: It’s time for the first day of the 2024 Personal Essay Writing Challenge! Each day, I’ll provide a writing prompt and a personal essay to get things started. You can secretly write along at home, or you can share your own personal essay(s) in the comments below. Check out the guidelines here.
For today’s prompt, write a personal essay about a work experience you’ve had. It could be a first job, last job, or some job in between. Don’t forget odd jobs, chores, volunteer opportunities, side hustles, or other types of work. If you’ve never had a work experience, write about that, because that’s interesting too.
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.
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Completely separate of this fun and free personal essay challenge, be sure to check out the annual Writer’s Digest Personal Essay Awards. The top prize is $2,500 cash, publication in Writer’s Digest, and more.
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Here’s my attempt at a Work Experience personal essay:
“Delivering the News,” by Robert Lee Brewer
I was one of those kids always angling for money in my neighborhood. If it snowed, I might throw a few snowballs, but it wasn’t long before I was walking door-to-door with a snow shovel offering to clear walkways for a fee. Leaves falling from trees? Better believe I was traipsing around with a rake.
So when an older boy mentioned he needed someone to take over his paper route, I didn’t hesitate to volunteer myself as the new neighborhood paperboy. Looking back now, I suppose it was technically my first job in publishing. And I learned a bit about local newspaper economics.
For instance, I wasn’t paid by the newspaper publisher. In fact, I paid them every week for the bundle of newspapers they dropped off each day. My payment came from the people who subscribed to the newspaper. Sometimes they would leave payment for me to collect, and sometimes I would have to try and collect payment (and spoiler: not everyone paid on time).
But setting the economics of being a paperboy to the side, this would be one of my favorite jobs. With my carrier bag over my shoulders, I’d walk my route listening to music on my Walkman as I delivered newspapers to every house every day. Bands like Technotronic, Soul II Soul, and Living Colour propelled me onward. If we didn’t move to another town, who knows how long I would’ve kept that job.
To this very day, I can’t hear “The Power,” by Snap!, without thinking of those days bouncing along Florence Avenue, Red Bank, Ramona Drive, and those other streets that comprised my route. It’s a bittersweet memory, because it’s hard not to think of all the enterprising future publishing professionals who will never get that first chance to deliver the news to their neighbors.
At this very moment, I’m a click away from all the news I could ever want (locally and from around the world), and most of it is free. I don’t have to wait for a new edition with limited space. I don’t have to pay a local delivery person for bringing it to my house. Yet in these moments when I allow myself to not be distracted I wonder, am I more connected now? Or am I (and the neighborhood in which I now live) less connected than ever?
With AI seeping into more and more of our daily lives, I can’t help but wonder who writes my news? And who, pray tell, delivers it?
(Note: There are no word count restrictions on your personal essays. They can be super short; they can be super long; or they can be somewhere between the extremes. For myself, to make this challenge manageable for me, I’ve made the decision to shoot for fewer than 500 words each day. We’ll see how it goes.)