Would YOU Sell Your Soul to Write

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

After writing full-time at a news wire service in San Francisco I decided to move to New York City and become a full-time freelance writer.

My only writing connection was to a new women’s magazine that had changed its name from Feeling Great! to Feeling Good!

Genius.

The editor guaranteed me (alright, I begged) one article a month. That paid the rent on my 397-square foot studio.

Heat, food, clothing, clubs, and other essentials I would have to pay for through additional writing.

At a party with far more successful friends than I, was a writer who had graduated from Andover, Harvard and Yale. I know because he mentioned them as often as he did his name. Sometimes, I thought they were his name.

He said he was making money as a freelance writer so I asked him how he did it.

“Porn,” he said, downing bourbon straight up. Yep. A Yalie.

I called his editor and made an appointment to see her. I wondered what a pornographic magazine office would look like.

Once the elevator doors parted I saw a woman in a leopard-print cat suit splayed on a desk with a man straddling her.

I should go home.

A way too smiley zaftig editor appeared, grabbed my arm and said she was ssoooooooooooooo happy to see me!!!!!!!!!

It is hard to describe the garment she was wearing. Yes, clothing was minimally involved but the main show was cleavage. Even today I do not recall her face but I’ll always remember that chest.

I really wanted to go home.

“Sit,” she pushed me in to a chair. She flopped her copious girls on her desk, folded her hands before them — she must have been a gymnast in a prior life — and assured me, “We’re going to be best friends.”

Must we?

“I read what you wrote,” she said. “Loved EVERYTHANG!”

I could only stare at her because my writing was so inappropriate for this genre. I sent her a piece about a detective who never met a crime he couldn’t solve. Another article was about a five-generation strong family that roasted coffee.

Noticing the open liquor bottles strewn around the office it was obvious that this bunch enjoyed a different brew.

“You’re amazing,” – her eyes closed at the thought and then flung wide open – “A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. We HAVE to have YOU!”

Was this a front for Scientology?

As she and her breast entourage approached me, my body tensed, my eyes enlarged. She dropped fistfuls of magazines into my lap.

Ewe.

I looked down at the glossy covers and looked away. Who knew what prior hands had touched them or what was on those fingers? I felt like my skirt held hundreds of Petri dishes each containing a different strain of some mutant sexually transmitted disease.

Gross.

“Aren’t these articles sooooooo sexy?!”

My mouth formed its own tentative smile. Words were just too much.

“When can ya start?” she asked breezily.

“Well, um, what do you pay?” My gas bill was due next week.

“Fifty dollars an article,” she smiled.

Fi-fif-tee dollars? My brain powers were returning, as was my monetary outrage. “That’s ridiculous.”

She waved my concerns away with a flip of her overly bejeweled wrist. “You just churn these babies out. I can write three, four, maybe five an hour. With my eyes closed. Standing on my head!”

Those images. Please, stop.

“Do you believe I get paid for having this much fun?” She giggled. “Sometimes I pinch myself because I can’t believe I get paid to write this.”

Her arms were outstretched. Toward me. I think I was being welcomed into the family fold. Meanwhile, cat suit woman and unclothed man were playing Adam and Eve. Maybe I’d be offered a piece of fruit. Clearly, Mr. Yalie and I had different views on compensation.

What this editor did not know and what I had just learned about myself – is though I lived in New York City and was scrounging for money like almost every writer I knew – at my core I was a nice, Jewish girl from Fairfield County, Connecticut, and we just did not do this sort of thing. I stood and the magazines, as well as the Human Genome Project mutating on them, tumbled to the floor.

“I have to leave!” I yelled, and ran until I reached the elevator, furiously punched the down button, climbed into my fortress and did not feel clean again until I emerged into the safety of a New York City street.

Later, I found other freelance writing gigs for an airline magazine, a direct marketing rag and a music publication.

I was also offered the opportunity to write about garbage for a waste management trade magazine. I turned that down, too.

Even a desperate writer has certain subjects that she simply will not touch.

tagged under: desperate writer.freelance writing.moms who blog.selling your soul for a writing gig.writing in New York City.Writing Mamas