Bob Bly’s
Guide to Freelance Writing Success
How to
Make $100,000 a Year as a Freelance
Writer
And Have
the Time of Your Life Doing It
By Robert W. Bly
Acknowledgments
The sections of this book appeared, in slightly different
format, as articles in a variety of publications, including
Writer’s Digest, Writing for Money, Business Marketing,
Successful Meetings, Chemical Engineering Progress, CPI-100, DM
News, Early to Rise, and Direct Marketing. Thanks go
to the publishers for their kind permission to reprint the
articles in this book.
Thanks to Beth Erickson, my editor and publisher, for her
enthusiasm for putting out a collection of my how-to articles
for writers, and to Bob Diforio, my agent, for smoothing the
way.
Special thanks to colleagues Andrew Frothingham, Don Kaufmann,
Joan Damico, Doug Deanna, Denise Ford, John Forde, Katie
Yeakle, Michael Masterson, Roger C. Parker, Barry Sheinkopf,
David Yale, Robert Lerose, and others too numerous to mention
for adding to my knowledge of the writing trade. And to my
proofreader, Jon Kaufmann, for doing good work
quickly.
Introduction
Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes
from bad judgment.
--Mark Twain
I have never had a best seller, despite having
written and published more than 50 books. Script writing
holds no appeal for me; I’m a print guy.
But I have
consistently earned more than $100,000 a year for the
last 20 years, and often as much as $500,000 a year by
running my freelance writing business as a
business.
I’ve done
nothing else special. Everything I know about making a
living as a freelance writer, I learned by trial and
error. There isn’t a mistake in the book I didn’t make;
not a technique I haven’t tried.
Now you can learn from my “expensive experience”
(as writer Dan Kennedy calls it), avoid my costly errors,
and achieve financial security in a fraction of the time
it took me. Believe me: If I can do it, anyone
can.
Bob Bly’s
Guide to Freelance Writing Success is a collection of
my articles and columns written about writing,
for writers, by a full-time freelance
writer who makes a very good living at it. It exists for
one purpose only: to help you double or even triple your
writing income by treating freelance writing as a
business, not a hobby or dilettante
activity.
How can you achieve a six-figure income as a
freelance writer? If you treat your freelance writing as
a home-based business and work at it steadily, providing
writing services for clients who need them, you can build
up a steady base of customers who give you repeat
business and lucrative assignments year after
year.
According to the National Writer’s Union, freelance article
writers who specialize in writing magazine articles typically
sell 3,000 to 4,000 words a month, because of the tremendous
amount of time spent looking for work – researching and
pitching article ideas. At that rate of production, you can
make $36,000 to $48,000 a year, provided you are paid $1 a word
– a rate most markets no longer come close
to.
So the chances of you getting rich writing articles are, at
best, slim to none.
Therefore, you must pursue another type of
writing, or at least supplement your poetry, fiction,
scriptwriting, or article writing habit with it. I call
it commercial writing. Commercial writing is any
writing that helps a company sell or help sell a product
or service, or helps an organization promote an idea or
cause. Examples include:
- Advertising
Copywriting – magazine and newspaper ads, TV and
radio commercials, for everything from software to
shampoo.
- Technical Writing
– user manuals, online help, and other
instructional materials for using hardware and
software.
- Online Writing
– corporations and small businesses alike need
tons of content for their company Web sites, not to
mention their e-zines (online
newsletters).
- Fundraising –
letters to raise money for politicians, political
parties, churches, museums, and a variety of other
nonprofits.
- Direct Marketing
– direct mail, telemarketing scripts, and other
copy to sell products and services by
mail.
- Public Relations
– press releases, media kits, and articles for
promoting a company, product, or cause in the
media.
- Corporate
Communications – assignments can range from
ghostwriting a speech for a Fortune 500 CEO to
creating multimedia presentations for a company’s
annual sales meeting.
- Ghostwriting
– writing speeches, articles, and books for
executives, individuals, and organizations to publish
under their byline, not yours.
A couple of writers I know specialize in writing annual
reports. Their average paycheck: $10,000 per assignment. Do one
annual report a month at this rate, and you will gross $120,000
a year.
Others I know specialize in writing “marcom.” Short for
“marketing communications,” marcom writers churn out press
releases, product sheets, sales brochures, trade ads, Web
pages, and other marketing materials for corporate clients. A
good marcom writer can easily surpass the $100,000 a year
mark.
Writers handling commercial assignments such as these can make
good money, and they can do so with regularity, year after
year.
Even if you don’t want to handle commercial assignments, there
are ways a freelancer can reach $50,000 a year or in some cases
even $100,000 a year without them. To do that, you’ve got to
develop work habits that put you in the top 5 percent of
writers when it comes to fees, productivity, efficiency,
selling, and self-promotion. You’ll find these tips and
strategies in this book, too.
You are unlikely to become truly wealthy, but you are likely to
become financially secure if you work hard at it, invest your
earnings, and live conservatively, well below your means. I
became a self-made multi-millionaire while still in my
30s.
To make six figures as a freelance writer, you need a business
plan. Fortunately, it’s simple, and looks something like
this:
1. SET YOUR ANNUAL INCOME GOAL. How much do you want to earn?
Pick a specific number. Start with $100,000 a
year.
2. SET YOUR WEEKLY AND DAILY INCOME GOALS. If you want to make
$100,000 a year and work 50 weeks a year, you must gross $2,000
a week from your writing. If you work five days a week, you
must earn $400 a day.
3. DETERMINE THE WRITING SERVICE YOU WILL OFFER. Can you find
something to write that will earn you $400 a day? If you can –
and believe me, you can – you are set to earn $100,000 a year
as a freelance writer.
To earn this amount of money, you will either have to pursue
some type of commercial writing – or double or triple your
productivity and profitability from their current level. The
areas mentioned earlier in this article – advertising
copywriting, technical writing, corporate communications,
public relations, online – can all enable you to gross $100,000
a year.
The nice thing is that you can choose to write about subjects
that interest you, for organizations that pay you extremely
well.
Another key advantage of commercial writing is
that clients come to you with assignments they want
written, rather than you having to pitch ideas to them.
This eliminates the enormous amount of time the
conventional freelance writer wastes in formulating ideas
with no compensation, making the freelance commercial or
business
writing twice as productive and three times more
profitable than magazine and newspaper work.
Here’s the best part: If you dream of writing
the Great American Novel or an epic poem, you don’t have
to give up that dream. As a freelance commercial writer,
you largely set your own schedule. After a hard day of
writing direct mail packages, I often like to put in a
pleasant hour or two writing a magazine article or
working on one of my books.
In these articles, I show you what types of
projects you can write to earn $100,000 a year as a
freelance writer, how to find clients, how to get them to
hire you, how to be super-productive, how to write better
and faster, and how to excel so they come back to hire
you for additional assignments again and
again.
I do have one favor to ask. If you have an idea
you’ve used to make money as a freelance writer, why not
tell me about it so I can share your success with readers
of the next edition of this book? You will receive full
credit, of course. Just e-mail me at rwbly@bly.com.
You can also find out more about me at my
primary Web site www.bly.com. And you can get personal one-on-one coaching
from me to help start or jump-start your freelance
writing career at www.selling-yourself.com.
Good luck!
Table of
Contents
1. Specialist or
Generalist
2. An Interview with
Harlan
Ellison
3. An Interview with
James Mustich,
Jr.
4. An Introduction to
Business
Freelancing
5. Writing Articles for Trade
Journals
6.
Moonlighting
7. A Fine Position to be
In
8. How to Set – and Get
– Your
Fees
9. The Bullet Proof Book
Proposal
10. What Should be in
Your Book
Proposal?
11. The $85,000 a Year
Freelance Writing
Opportunity
12. My Fee
Schedule
13. To Sell More, Write
More
14. What to do When Your
Book Goes Out of
Print
15. Teach and Grow
Rich
16. Finding a Good Idea
for Your
Book
17. Wanted: Industrious
Writers
18. Expand Your Writing
Business with Sales
Brochures
19. Ten Steps to Setting
Financial
Goals
20. Avoid These
Technical Writing
Mistakes
21. Why Clients Rewrite
Your Copy and What to Do About
It
22. Consulting: Is It
Really for
You?
23. Publishing Your Own
E-Zine
24. Rochester
Review
Profile
25. Shopper
Article
26. The Proof
Piece
27. Chemical
Engineering Progress
Article
28. Inside Direct
Mail
Profile
29. The Golden
Thread
Interview
30. The Writer
Profile
31. Guerilla
Writefare
32. Twenty-Two Rules for
Successful
Self-Promotion
33. Handling Information
Overload
34. Web Sites Must Meet
Marketing
Objectives
35. Confessions of an
Industrial Ad
Man
36. Maybe You Should
Write a
Book
37. Do More In Less
Time
38. Give Memorable
Presentations
39. Ten Marketing Books
Worth
Reading
40. Ten Steps to Online
Success
41. Hiring an
Assistant
42. Should You Get an
Agent?
43. How to Network
Effectively
44. Getting
Paid
45. Should You Have a
Web
Site?
46. Personal Finance for
Freelance
Writers
47. Is Reading
Dead?
Appendix: Web sites,
Periodicals, and Books for
Writers
About the
Author
Index
1. Specialist or
Generalist?
I often get asked by writers who are interested
in earning a six-figure income from freelancing: “Should
I be a specialist or a generalist?”
The short answer: Be a specialist. Reason: Specialists are more
in demand, and they can charge more than
generalists.
You have a better chance of being paid top
dollar – and reaching the $100,000 a year mark – as a
specialist.
With so many writers, clients and editors are
more likely to call you if they can pigeonhole you into a
specialty; you increase your chances of getting called
for assignments when you specialize. Need a writer who
knows fashion? Call Diane. Want someone who can quickly
pull together an article on a complex new computer
technology? That’s what Steve does best.
“Clients want to pigeonhole you,” says Ilise
Benun, a self-promotion consultant. “Although you hate
it, let them do it. In fact, help them. Give them a box
to put you in, and a label to put on your box. There’s
plenty of time later to tell them more about your full
range of services.”
What can you specialize in? Many writers specialize by topic.
Jerry Baker is “ America’s Master
Gardener.” Tom Hopkins is the guy who writes about selling.
Robert Fulgham is the touchy feely guy. Timothy Ferris,
science.
Fiction writers specialize in genre. Raymond Feist does
fantasy. Danielle Steele, romance. Stephen King,
horror.
Writers who handle commercial assignments often specialize by
format. My friend Cameron Foot writes annual reports and
speeches almost exclusively. Katie Muldoon specializes in
catalog copywriting.
Still others specialize by industry. David
Woods, a colleague in New Hampshire, writes marketing
materials exclusively for construction companies. Roscoe
Barnes specializes in fundraising.
And others specialize by medium. My friend Nick Usborne, once a
direct mail writer like me, now specializes in writing online
direct marketing almost exclusively.
Why do publishers, editors, and clients prefer specialists to
generalists?
Say you are launching a new breakfast cereal, and have put your
life savings into the venture, along with funds from a lot of
anxious investors. You are introducing the product with a TV
commercial to air during the Super Bowl at a cost of $1
million.
You are looking for a writer to handle the job. Dave has 20
years experience on Madison Avenue. He has a reel full of
absolutely fabulous TV commercials written for dozens of major
packaged goods clients, including Post and Kellogg. Six have
won Clios, the ad industry’s highest award.
John is also a good writer, but his portfolio
contains mostly sales brochures and magazine ads for
consumer electronics and industrial equipment. There’s
one script for a TV commercial he wrote for a local bank,
but he doesn’t have it on video because it hasn’t run
yet.
You like both of their writing. Who do you
pick?
That’s easy. All else being equal, you go with
Dave, because of his expertise doing TV commercials for
major national brands.
Why? Because choosing Dave is the less risky
proposition. John might handle the assignment
brilliantly. But when the stakes are high, you want
someone who’s done it before.
Clients are willing to pay writers handsomely
for their expertise. We can command top dollar, and we
are more in demand. Our specialized knowledge and
experience set us apart, add value to our writing
services, and shift the supply and demand equation in our
favor. So we have a constant flow of choice assignments
coming our way.
Not only are specialists paid more than
generalists, but we can also complete our assignments
faster.
When you are a generalist, all the studying you
do to get up to speed on gold mining is wasted when you
never write about gold mining again and your next article
is about raising prize-winning roses.
But if you specialize in mining and natural
resources, your accumulation of knowledge and research is
amortized over dozens or even hundreds of projects, not
just one.
You know about and have already bookmarked all
the important Web sites on mining and natural resources.
Because you write about this field all the time, you
can
afford to own the major reference books and
subscribe to the key trade publications. Writers who are
generalists can’t.
You have a database or Rolodex of contacts and
experts: key sources you can interview to get information
for the article you are writing on mining and natural
resources this week. Because you publish regularly in the
field, these experts are more willing to talk to you than
someone whose name they haven’t seen in print.
Therefore, you eliminate a lot of the
“familiarization research” generalists conduct. You may
in fact know more about the topic than the editor or
client who hired you. So you can do the assignment better
and in half the time it would take a
generalist.
If you can get twice the fee and each assignment
takes half the time, you will make four times more money
than the generalist.
Many writers have multiple specialties. WD columnist Dan
Poynter specializes in writing about self-publishing,
parachuting, and being an expert witness. He says that three
(or at most four) is the maximum number of specialties you can
have; any more and you spread yourself too thin. Dan made the
stretch, adding a fourth specialty: writing about taking care
of aging cats; he recently published his first book on that
topic.
How do you establish and market yourself as a specialist? Here
are a few suggestions:
1. Seek out repeat assignments. When you find a
specialty that appeals to you, actively campaign to get new
assignments in the field, so you can build a large portfolio of
samples in that niche.
2. Network. Join associations in your specialty field.
Go to meetings. Network. My friend, freelance writer Linda
Ketchum, goes to conferences on nuclear medicine. She is not a
doctor, but she is a writer specializing in that
field.
3. Increase your visibility. Write a regular column in
your niche industry’s leading trade publication. Even if the
pay is low, the credibility you gain is priceless. Writing a
book on the topic can also help establish you as an expert
quickly.
4. Gain credentials. See whether there is a degree,
certification, or other credential you can gain with a
reasonable amount of time, money, and effort. When I began
doing a lot of work in high-tech marketing, I became a CNA
(Certified Novell Administrator), which I could do by taking
one course (though it cost $1,000).
5. Prepare niche-marketing tools. Prepare versions of
your one-page bio, letterhead, business card, and other
self-promotion materials tailored to each niche in which you
specialize.
One other point: There’s no reason why you can’t
be both a specialist and a generalist.
I specialize in two types of writing: direct mail and e-mail
marketing. But if someone asks me to write an annual report, I
don’t turn it down.
Because I have no special expertise in annual report writing, I
don’t actively market myself in that area or seek assignments.
I do actively seek assignments writing direct mail, my major
specialty. Consequently, I write annual reports only
occasionally.
But I do write them. As a specialist, you can still function as
a generalist in other areas, when the request arises. Just
don’t actively market yourself as a
generalist.
Your specialty clients won’t mind that you take
an occasional assignment outside your niche, but just the
same, there’s no need to advertise the fact. Build your
reputation as an expert in your specialty, and clients
and publishers will come to you, rather than you having
to go to them.
2. An Interview with Harlan
Ellison
The Washington Post said Harlan Ellison
is “one of the great living American short story
writers,” and the Los Angeles Times called
him the “20th century Lewis
Carroll.”
In a career
spanning more than half a century, he has written or
edited 75 books; 1700 stories, essays, articles, and
columns; two dozen teleplays; and a dozen motion
pictures. His much publicized lawsuit against America
Online, in which he charges that AOL didn’t act fast
enough when a fan posted some of his stories without his
permission on a forum carried by the service, recently
made the front page of The Wall Street
Journal.
Bob Bly
(BB): When we first met in 1979, you were 45. Now
you’re 69. How are things different, as far as the writer
is concerned, today versus back then?
Harlan
Ellison (bemused): Ah, “back then.” Way “back
then” in the Mesozoic, right? Kiddo, it’s not even
twenty-five years. But that’s part of the problem for
writers establishing a career, cultural amnesia due to
television and the Internet. But, to answer your question
directly, in terms of money, condition of work, and
approbation, worse. Life is a lot harder for writers
now.
BB:
Well, do you directly blame it on the
Internet?
HE:
Oh, I guess in substantial measure, I do. The
slovenliness of thinking on the Web. There is a culture
of belief today that everything should be free. The
Internet is the glaring promoter of such slacker-gen
“philosophy,” and that goes to the core of my
lawsuit.
People have been gulled into believing that
everything should be free, and that if a professional
gets published, well, any thief can steal it, and post
it, and the thug feels abused if you whack him for it.
Meanwhile, vast hordes of semi-or untalented amateurs
festoon the Internet with their ungrammatical, puerile
trash, and they think because this “vanity” publication
gets seen by a few people, that they are “writers.” Horse
puckey!
That isn’t being published; that’s the fanzine
press. And there are fewer and fewer real venues for a
professional writer nowadays to make a decent living at
the craft.
BB:
Would you go so far as to say the Internet has destroyed
the writing trade?
HE: I
don’t think that’s going too far. When you destroy the
basic philosophy, the parameters of a field of endeavor –
everything changes. You stand on the cusp of a gigantic
paradigm shift, where nothing is of the same
value.
I’ll go to speak at a college, and I’ll have
some kid stand up and say, “Well, writers shouldn’t be
paid; they should put their stuff up; and if people like
it they get paid for it.” And I think: what the hell
looneytune universe are you living in, kid? The
question indicates a total lack of understanding of how
Reality Works. This kid’s been living off mommy and daddy
too long.
Or someone else will say you ought to be
subsidized, and I say, well, the last time I looked, the
Doge of Venice or the Pope wasn’t laying out much green
to keep the mortgage paid or food on the table of
American storytellers. So until a wealthy and generous
patron decides that I’m worth subsidizing, I’ll have to
scrabble in the bean field just like everybody
else.
These mooks don’t think of writing as a craft or
even as an occupation. They think it’s some kind of
dilettante behavior. Much like their own
lives.
BB:
Why don’t writers “get no respect”?
HE:
Because half the world is illiterate, or hasn’t read a
book since before Reagan introduced mediocrity as a
college-level course; and the other half treads water in
the gravy of hubris secretly knowing they can
write, if only they had the spare time. I keep saying
everybody deludes themselves that there are three things
in this life they know they can do: they can drive
a car more brilliantly than Fangio, and everybody
else on the road is inept; they can screw like Don
Juan and delight the g-spot every time; and they can
write. Better than King, better than Dickens, better than
Homer. When in fact these are three of the most
difficult things in the world to do, and only a very few
people do even one with grandeur, much less all
three well.
BB:
But this doesn’t stop people from trying to get
published, right?
HE:
Are you kidding? Delusions this deeply entrenched? A
flamethrower couldn’t deter the poor bastards! It’s hard,
if not impossible, to convince people who are amateurs,
because all amateurs think that they secretly have the
gifts of a Joyce Carroll Oates or a Joseph Conrad. And
they don’t. (Not to mention that their fantasy constructs
include “secrets of writing” and cabals of writers and
editors dedicated to keeping their breathless prose from
seeing print.) In fact, it’s the amateurs who make it
hard for the professionals.
The amateurs are the ones who give their
stories away, because they want to be recognized; and
that’s fine, I suppose, if they want to be patsies, but
then when the time
comes for a publisher to pay, the well has been
poisoned, and the publisher says, “Well, everybody else
gave us their story. Why do you want a
fee?” And I say, well, Cowboy, just because everybody
else is a simp, jumped off the cliff, and paid you
for the privilege, doesn’t mean I’m going do it.
I’m a pro, mudduhfugguh, and you can prey on the
ignorance and hayseed naiveté of these hungry fish, but
not me. Pay me!
BB: If
you could go back in time and stop the Internet from
being invented, would you do it?
HE: I
would certainly do it if I was selfish, and I’m about as
selfish as anybody is. But no, I wouldn’t do it, because
the good things that it does are things that are
necessary. Doctors, for instance, have access to
life-saving information that they wouldn’t have
otherwise. Locating lost kids is easier. Scientists can
exchange information across the planet in moments, not
years. It’s the “chat-net” and all its endlessly
babbling, trivial adjuncts that are
idiocy-promoting.
So, no, I wouldn’t kill off the Internet; I’d
just like to maim the crap out of it. I think as people
get pretty much the kind of government they deserve, I
believe people get pretty much the kind of culture they
deserve. If they allow themselves to be manipulated by
advertising and by corporations, which are the true
governments of the world these days, then they deserve
all the madness and unease that eats at us daily. And if
we go down to extinction faster, well that’s okay too.
The cockroaches will probably do a peachy job of running
things. I won’t be around to worry about it. I worry
about the human race while I’m alive, and may, by
yelling, “the sky is falling” loud enough,
manage to serve the commonweal, but the minute
I’m dead, I’m not going to worry about it. I think I’m on
safe ground with that position.
BB: Is
it a plus that the Internet gives the average person
better, faster access to information?
HE:
What makes you think it’s better information? The
web is polluted top to bottom with lousy reprints of bad
or inadequate, bogus or incorrect simulacra of
untrustworthy “information.” As for faster, well,
just because there’s an ocean of random data out there,
it doesn’t make the doofus – who can’t find what s/he
needs in the Britannica – any more adept at finding what
s/he needs in the Internet swamp. The Internet has
destroyed the use of the library, it has destroyed the
use of the dictionary, and as a result people don’t speak
as well, because when you go looking up a word in a
dictionary, you pass fifty other words that stick in your
head and you find other serendipitous stuff, and you just
become a better, more literate, smarter and more
well-rounded person.
BB:
You still write your stories on a manual typewriter. Did
you ever try using a pc?
HE:
For fiction? Yeah, once. I was down with the flu.
Deadline time. So my wife, Susan, showed me how to use a
pc and I sat there in the bed, and I tried to write a
mere column that I had to have out by day’s end. Easy job
on my Olympia. I gave it a good shot, I really did. And
after about 45 minutes Susan came in just as I was
lifting the damned thing above my head – and I was going
to throw it against the wall – and she screamed, “Oh my
god, it’s a $10,000 computer! It belongs to Joe
Straczynski, Joe
loaned it to us! Don’t do that, don’t do that!”
So I had to give it to her instead of bitch-slapping it
to death.
I am just not that kind of a guy. I mean, look,
there are some people who take to ice skates instantly.
You know what I mean: never been on ice skates, puts on
ice skates, bang, he’s great. An Arctic Fred Astaire. Me,
my ankles collapse, and I fall on my head. On the other
hand, you put me out in the woods and I can find my way
home in three seconds, because I have an absolutely
infallible sense of direction. Not to mention I drive a
car brilliantly, and I used to be spectacular at sex till
my penis fell off.
There are things that I can do. I can repair any
damn thing. Almost anything in the house goes bad, I can
rewire it. I can plaster, I was a bricklayer. Yeah, there
are a lot of things I can do. But I think it
necessary, if one is to be an adult and have a mature and
intelligent life, to understand the things that you
cannot do and just say, okay that’s it. Suck it up
and move on.
I can’t draw, for instance. I’ve art directed
books, I’ve won art directors’ awards, I can see it all
in my head – but I haven’t got a fingernail’s worth of
drawing ability.
But I can write. I can write like a sonofabitch.
That’s what I do, and I know it, so I do it. I just
do it.
BB:
You have been known as a firebrand. Have you mellowed
with age?
HE:
Everybody tells me I’m mellower since I married Susan.
They think that she has quieted me
down.
And yet a week ago as we speak, well … I live
here in Los Angeles. There’s a back road that leads up to
where we live, here on a mountaintop. It’s a fire road. A
week
ago, we were going down to dinner with some
friends of ours, and suddenly here comes a guy driving
backwards up this curving mountain road, doing
about 35 miles an hour! Close to ran us off the cliff.
That idiot phlegmwad!
I did a wheelie, and I ran the crazy sonofabitch
down. I trapped him in a cul-de-sac to get his number and
turn him over to the cops. And he gets out of his car;
he’s about 6’ 4” and I’m 5’5” and he’s in his 20s, and
I’m this wretched hunchbacked crippled and senile 69 year
old, who must’ve looked to be easy to
intimidate.
So Gorgo comes storming up to me and he gets
right up in my face, screaming how he’s going to kill me.
And I just whacked him one in the mouth, and back he
stumbles, startled. He suddenly turns into the Cowardly
Lion: “Why did you hit me? Sniff sniff.”
And I said, as I was writing down his license
plate number, “If you get any closer to me, I’m going to
drive this fountain pen into your left eye.” Got his
information, and called the cops. I’m almost 70 and I’m
in a street fight, for Chrissakes! Yeah, I’m mellower. I
gotcher mellower. A good writer never gets
mellower. Only crankier. As Bertolt Brecht said: “He who
laughs has simply not heard the bad news.”
Here I am teetering on the lip of the abyss, any
moment to croak, and I’m suing AOL for allowing people to
steal my stories and put them up on the Internet, and
it’s costing me virtually every penny I’ve got. All of my
retirement money, such as it was – you know, the nest egg
– $312,000 so far, and you’re asking me
“mellower”?
We’re waiting for a finding to come down from
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals up in San Francisco,
and if it goes against me, well that’s it – I’m out
three
hundred and twelve Gs minimum, and in my
twilight years, I guess I’ve got to start all over again
and try and make enough money to live on. Probably have
to go back to dancing for dimes on Wilshire
Blvd.
BB:
But basically, it sounds as if you still have no
fear.
HE
(assuming noble pose): I guess that’s my curse. As
Spider-Man says, “With great power comes great
responsibility.” (I like quoting from the classics).
Well, in my case, with fearlessness comes great
stupidity. I’m just not afraid of things. There’s nothing
anybody could do to me that would make me
afraid.
People do things out of fear; you know what I
mean: they’ll lose their job, their rep will be ruined,
no one will love them, their family won’t be able to eat,
blah, blah, blah, and those are exactly the usual fears
that society uses, and has always used, to keep
you in line, to keep you doing things you don’t want to
do, to shame you into Political Correctness and
conformity, in a job you don’t like, in a relationship
you can’t stand, terrified that if you don’t worship and
think exactly as you’re told, you’ll go to Hell or,
worse, never get that autographed photo of Jerry
Falwell.
Cursed or blessed, I’ve never had those
paralyzing fears. I’ve been on my own since I was a kid,
on the road at age thirteen, and I bypassed all the early
middle-class crap that programs us to be shivering,
rationalizing chickenhearts. I have no fears. Not a
firebrand, just too lumpen to have fear. Bob Silverberg
says of me: “Harlan isn’t brave, he’s just fearless.”
Which is absolutely true. You can’t allow yourself
to be frightened, not if you want the writing to have
heat and reason and passion.
BB:
How can writers get involved in your
lawsuit?
HE: In
my lawsuit against AOL, I seem to be fighting for
copyright and for all writers, whether amateur or
professional. This is a life-changing and very important
lawsuit. I will get nothing out of it. I’m not going to
get any money off it, but anybody who contributes to it
will, when we win, get their money back, plus $20
“earnest money,” and a nice note from me thanking them
for their contribution.
Donations may be sent to KICK Internet Piracy,
P.O. Box 55935, Sherman Oaks, CA. 91413. Make your check
payable to “The Trust of Kulik, Gottesman and
Mouton.”
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