…are “They,” “Pay,” and “Promptly.”
Just got back from town. I had a wan hope of a check from Backwoods Home for that article they accepted last month. There’s a lot of back-and-forth in snailmail regarding contracts and so forth, and with my mailing travails a mere month would be a very short turnover. So I wasn’t really expecting a check, just thinking about one.
Probably just because of inflation this would be my biggest single payday for a feature article ever. Not that I’m gonna set up my coach and four or anything, just that feature writing doesn’t pay all that well. I’ve been paid much more for writing gigs, but they tended to involve the operations manual for some company’s proprietary database or some other company’s revisionist history (Hint: Yes, Mitsubishi was involved in World War II despite anything you might have failed to learn from what I wrote in its official history, which completely omits its most famous product.) In short, there’s writing what you want to write and then there’s writing what some company hired you to write. The second one pays one helluva lot better.
Back in the day I used to write features when I could get them even though I already spent most of my everloving day writing for money. They didn’t pay squat and I used to catch hell from my wife over them, but I had this fading dream of being a fiction writer back then and writing features let me feel like a ‘writer.’
Anyway: I got the check! Yay! It doesn’t exactly end my money troubles since I don’t exactly have a bank account into which to deposit the check, but it’s a giant step in the right direction.
If anybody happens to see the actual article at BHM – you’ll probably recognize it – be sure to let me know.
Congratulations, Joel, I hope you book is done shortly. Things seem to come in threes.What next?
I hope you book is done shortly.
You and me both. There are still a couple of hurdles to be cleared.
Which issue will feature your article?
We are long-time subscribers.
🙂
I dunno, it’s up to them. Might be the next one, or the one after that, or some other.
“In short, there’s writing what you want to write and then there’s writing what some company hired you to write. The second one pays one helluva lot better.”
Oh, so very, very true. While I never had to do anything as egregious as leaving WWII out of Mitsubishi’s official history, I did my share of praising corporate “stewardship” and covering up clients’ dubious connections and deeds.
Finally, when political writing possibilities opened with the brand-new baby Internet, I made the leap … right into a financial abyss. Twenty years later I’m still relieved that I no longer need to joke about being a “professional liar.” But oh, those hourly rates were a joy …
Fortunately, I am about as creative as a rock and as driven to do anything of the sort as the same rock.
I’d hate to have to deal with the emotions are other issues that go along with being paid to do something like that, something that meant much to me.
Not that there would be a lot of emotional time, I’d starve to death fairly quickly.
Mitsubishi….. there used to be a aviation historian at the San Diego Museum of Aviation who at one time had been a Skunk Works type before he retired.
I got to know him briefly in the 1980s, he drove a Mitsubishi Colt with a bumper sticker that said
“Brought to you by the maker of the ZERO.”
I thought that was kinda cute.
He seemed to hold “Zero’s” and “Betty’s” in exceedingly high regard.
The record denying seems contagious. Bayer doesn’t talk about their WWII shenanigans, either.
It seems Asians in general can be weird about education, and by weird I mean totalitarian. I met a bunch of educated Chinese guys who honestly believed Tibet had always been a Chinese province, happy as a clam. They’d never heard anything to the contrary, and never asked. And I’m told lots of Japanese are barely aware there even was anything called WWII, and certainly nothing happened there that was Japan’s fault. This history I mentioned started sometime in the early ’20’s stopped in 1935, and picked up again in 1946 with no hint that anything might have happened in the meantime.
What was bizarre about it to me, as a techie American, is that any other customer would have crowed about the Zero. Does Messerschmitt pretend the Me 262 didn’t happen just because it had a swastika on its tail? The Zero was one of the four or five truly great fighter planes of the war and easily the greatest overall carrier plane until right at the end. To simply ignore it in a company history was impossible for me to understand at the time. Later I worked more closely with Japanese engineers at another company and found that there was nothing very unusual about it. They’ll talk your ear off about samurai and shit like that, but that particular war is a forbidden topic. Weird.
On my first ship, I had an AX1 in my shop, Ben, who loved Zeroes. He drove a Mitsu car & was enormously proud of his “A6M” personalized plate. It cost extra, but Ben was Cuban-born, got out with his parents in ’59. I’ve met few people with a more fervent love of America.
BTW, the ship was CV-67, the Kennedy; my second was the FID, CV-59.