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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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