March 24, 2006
I'm not being snarky and unappreciative. Far from it. But it's Friday and my youngest son is home from school because, well, he has no school, and one of his friends will be over for the afternoon, and I...

Well, let's explain this last bit in more detail. I had a regular client, and perhaps will continue to, but late last year they asked me to write an article. I did. It was a complicated subject, and the laws were changing under our feet (it involves at some level, Medicaid, let's leave it at that), and they went through some editorial changes at the end of the year. Usually when I turned in an article, things moved promptly from comments to invoicing/acceptance to publication to payment.

This time things dragged on. I pitched a few other ideas. Nothing. Then I followed up, asking for progress. Was told of their publication's travails and was promised she would get to it THAT week. Two weeks later, I'm given the manuscript back with comments and changes. As I mentioned, some of the laws changed during this waiting period, and the article needed an update. She sent along some articles and sources I could use. I rewrote it. Then, late yesterday, she has one or two more comments. I answer them. She also, afterward, makes a comment about how the lead I had sent on this second rewrite wasn't publishable, rather neatly forgetting that she had rewritten the initial lead and asked for all this legal/fact stuff at the top, which I had supplied. Then she complains about it and puts my original lead on it. Then she says something along the lines of, I'm not familiar with this new legislation, please double-check it. I comment that it came from the materials she sent me and I had 3 of the 4 experts re-read the article after I made the changes and nobody mentioned any problem with it. She comes back with, "Double-check them anyway." So I go to the source and verify that it's all accurate and send it off.

This is about 4 months after the initial assignment, 3 months after having turned it in, the article has practically doubled in length and I still haven't gotten paid.

Okay? So when I come in and suggest that writing for a living is a JOB, even as a freelancer and a novelist, and that sometimes, not all the time, but SOMETIMES, I'm living for the weekend (even though I often gladly write on the weekend), and SOMETIMES I could really use a vacation, and sometimes the fact that the business of writing, whether fiction or nonfiction has its ups-and-downs, that isn't to say that I don't love this job.

And, in fact, just prior to yesterday's experience, I was thinking that out of all my editors, this editor is probably the sharpest I've ever worked with. If she has any question, ANY question, in a manuscript, she asks for a clarification. If she thinks some statement creates too many questions, she's just as likely to eliminate it. She's very, very good. But this particular assignment--and frankly, I think it was an important topic that I handled very well, just chock full of interesting, important information--didn't go very well from a writer/editor relationship kind of thing. I don't know if we will continue working with each other. I would like to because they're a decent paying publication with a nearly bottomless need for materials, but freelancing can be fragile and you just never know.

And I doubt that it's different with novel publishing either. It's a fickle business. I'd be happier if editors at both ends of the business had some kind of understanding of how a freelancer's business and life runs--ie., how often do THEY do work and not get paid for 4 months?--but it's the life I've chosen, and short of the bumps in the road, I love it.

Best,
Mark Terry