June 8, 2005
I don't know what it is, but some writing assignments just don't want to get completed. I don't think I'm much of a procrastinator (note to all procrastinators: I do not recommend freelance writing for you as a career objective). But every now and then I get an article assignment that I tend to shuffle to the back burner. Sometimes it's because the deadline is open-ended or the deadline is a little ways off. It's possible that's why this happened thish time. For some reason I kept delaying putting off the article, including not getting around to writing it for a week or two after all the interviews were completed. Then when I did write it--it was about online appointment software and CPT Code 0074T--I only nibbled at it.

I suspect it wasn't lack of interest. More like lack of focus. I pitched a straightforward article, then my editor attached something that I wasn't sure belonged in the same article, or deserved to be a second article or lengthy sidebar. Then, while interviewing for the article, things began to expand in ways that I hadn't expected. So I think what I did was write three articles in one, way too long (it's an online magazine, so length isn't necessarily an issue), and I think they may need to serialize it. I really didn't know how to get around this problem, and I mentioned it in my cover letter when I turned in the article. It's a good article, but it's too long. Had this been a print magazine with space considerations, I would have done something dramatic, like cut the entire middle section, which turned out to be about off-site computer services and online insurance verification, a subject that came up and seemed too important to the topic that I couldn't imagine leaving it out. As it is, it's a tight, crisp, lively article of real value to the readership, so I ought to be okay.

On a different tack, I dropped in on a morbid website called The Death Clock and took the test to see how long I was supposed to live. My Armageddon Day, they say, is May 1, 2047, which gives me slightly less than 42 years to live. That would make me 83 years old, give or take, which is a good lifespan, I guess (at least unless you're 82). My grandparents all lived into their 90s, but my father died of cancer at the age of 77 and my mother has Alzheimer's, so there are some things stacked against me. Of course, I could get hit by a crashing meteor while walking the dog tomorrow and the whole nonsense would be moot, wouldn't it?

As that great sage and prophet, Jimmy Buffet has said, "I'd rather die while I'm living them live while I'm dead."

Best,
Mark Terry