After reading the entries for each contest, we can see how difficult it is to come up with a unique plot when working with an assigned topic. But, inevitably, a few writers do manage to successfully break away from the pack.
So, today, hop aboard a fishing boat, and assist with processing today’s catch…
Letters will return next week.
Well, that’s a silly title, isn’t it? I chose it because of a little read-in-the-bathroom book a friend gave to my husband last Christmas. In it there was this saying: ‘I became self employed and I still have a jerk for a boss.’ It gave me a chuckle but it also got my gray cells going in the direction of writing. When it comes to this area of my life – and maybe yours – I’m self employed. And sometimes I don’t like my boss. Why? Let me count the ways.
I have written four articles for a national women’s magazine, one every month or two. The magazine’s policy is that writers are paid 60ish days after publication. The first was paid late (in the meantime, I was working on the 4th) and, after much haranguing, they finally paid about a month late with excuses about how the financial department was held up due to this or that. Now we’re at over 90 days on the second… so I’m detecting a pattern. I never signed a contract (I know, I know…). My emails asking about payment for the second are going largely ignored (my contact keeps saying, “I’ll check on it for you!” and then never responds).
I was 55 when I was first published by a magazine. MIDWEST LIVING had asked readers to write about their most unforgettable winter experience for an upcoming issue. At the time, I was trying to get started as a freelance writer. As I had had an unforgettable winter experience (during the Ohio blizzard of ’79, I’d saved a young boy’s life), I hastily put together an essay on what had happened, and sent it in. To my delight, they published it and paid me $50.
Encouraged by this small triumph, I sent another small essay I’d written about my dog to FIRST FOR WOMEN. They published it and paid me $300. Then, a long dry spell. All my submissions were steadily rejected. I began to question my ability as a writer. The first two accepts had been a fluke, I told myself; I was 55 for crying out loud, a bona fide senior citizen. I told myself I should be content just sitting out my remaining years in my rocking chair.
But those first two sells had lit a fire inside me so I continued sharpening my writing skills along with my pencils…
Ebook publishers agree to $69 million settlement in state price-fixing lawsuit.
Penguin – Threatened with lawsuit by the Defense Department over book about Osama Bin Laden killing.
INTERESTING! – When the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses. “Newsweek’s female researchers and fact-checkers sued the magazine in 1970 to overturn a system that all but barred women from becoming writers, reporters and editors.”
