In the Quill of the Knight
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union IN THE QUILL OF THE KNIGHT BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS "What's it like to be a free-lance writer?" young people keep asking. "Is it hard? Is it possible? How'd you get...
...The knight-errant, says my trusty dictionary, "traveled in search of adventures in which to exhibit military skill, prowess and generosity...
...My break came in 1962 when a shrewd publisher mercifully fired me...
...In theory, the knight could go around slaying whatever dragons caught his eye or incurred his displeasure...
...That is why free-lancers often come in out of the cold...
...How'd you get started...
...The New Deal reformer Rexford Tug-well once had occasion to address some of his younger successors in government . What he told them in 1958 is precisely what I wish to tell free-lance initiates in 1983: "Fail as gloriously as some of your predecessors have...
...At Howard's request, I wrote down five paragraphs, each embodying a different article idea, and mailed them in...
...The event shook me upI've never been much good at judging my own performance and I had no idea what to do next...
...Besides, the praise is welcome...
...prefers to live in France...
...Chance helped me to do it the other way around...
...I had newspaper jobs in Chicago and magazine jobs in New York...
...Merely talking about writing won't do...
...First, beggars and acolytes can't be choosers...
...Well, why not...
...The article did no one any harm...
...From this I conclude that beginners seldom exceed their editors' expectations...
...It took me two months to finish the research and write the article (2,500 words...
...If I continued at that blistering pace for a full year, I would earn $1,800...
...Second, it wasn't a foolish direction...
...It was a grin of gratitude...
...You just put them into wars...
...A friend in New York told me to go see Howard Cohen, the editor of Pageant Magazine...
...Son," he said, "never charge a client what you think you're worth...
...Lots of times," I lied, sniffing an assignment...
...If he happened to be a feminist, he could teach the damsels how to rescue themselves...
...Well, the life of a free-lancer can be chronicled in rhyme...
...Third, editors are no different than anyone else: They have their peculiarities, their endearments, their little obsessions...
...I' ve spent t wo years trying to persuade somebody to write this piece," he confided...
...And you will have the satisfaction, which is not to be discounted, of having annoyed a good many miscreants who had it coming to them...
...I discovered later that Ho ward's problem was finding passable writers willing to work at the magazine's niggardly rates...
...Moreover, it must be admitted that the free-lance temperament, with its delusions of knight-errantry, is unpromising union material...
...By way of contrast, the beginning writer's professional assets are likely to be restricted to a ream of recycled paper (speckled), an old typewriter (the "r" sticks), and one or two dubious connections in the publishing world...
...The term "free lance" goes back to feudal times when a roving knight might rent out his spear and talents to the highest or noblest bidder...
...Budding populist and Socialist writers please take note...
...But he suggested a sixth...
...Where would we organize...
...And he had friends in high places...
...Then I ventured out into the cold...
...Writers can't reform society but if they keep spotlighting its defects, society may sometimes feel bound to reform itself...
...Still, the lessons to be learned from that seminal experience were manifold...
...The only way I know of repaying them is to keep trying to write clean sentences that approach the truth...
...What I lacked was a sense of proportion...
...Free-lancers can still go far just by repeating or cleaning up other people's ideas, especially the ideas of power...
...he was part of the lonely crowd...
...I know-I've tried it...
...Herbert Hoover was a frequent house guest in Emporia...
...They show more promise than competence...
...When I assented, Howard smiled for the first time...
...Asian flu may not have been my top writing priority, but at least it was an honorable subject...
...It's a calling like any other, which is to say it is socially useful once in a while...
...I'll supply the ideas," he might have told his knight...
...awaits invitations to the dance...
...Theodore Roosevelt became his boon companion...
...When I called on him a few weeks later taking a rickety freight elevator to his attic office in Manhattan-he immediately dismissed all five ideas...
...But beware of economic perils...
...it even provided one or two useful pieces of information...
...Free-lance writers should relax long enough to find out what's likeable about their editors, and what their editors really want...
...He could protect the weak, defend heretics and rescue damsels in distress...
...Just doing no evil is sometimes good enough-and it's harder than you think...
...I was absolutely wild about Asian flu...
...I also conclude, happily, that the more one writes, the better one writes...
...For another, free-lancers and their markets seem too varied and dispersed to meet the demands of solidarity...
...As things turned out, the corporations that employed me back then were unwittingly honing my spear, the better to skewer them with two decades later...
...But it is just a dream...
...There is no substitute for on-the-job practice...
...As a rule the knight was short on cash and long on independence...
...Thus, according to my 1928 Webster's International, a free lance is one "who acts on his own responsibility without regard to party lines or deference to authority, as a writer who assails now one party or set of opinions, and now another...
...often takes a chance...affects an independent stance...
...If you do not succeed in bringing about a permanent change, you may at least have stirred some slow consciences so that in time they will give support to action...
...Although I can't speak for our skill and prowess, our generosity appears beyond dispute...
...After all, Howard was getting paid to clean up my prose and spare me large embarrassments...
...he could aim my spear in any direction he chose...
...A closing note: It seems clear that free-lancers depend for sustenance and consolation on strangers and loved ones alike...
...Any interest" was surely an understatement...
...Wielding a free lance in the Middle Ages probably entailed the same glories and drawbacks that it does today...
...Unlike knights of yore, today's free-lancers cannot afford to wait for the next Crusade to come along...
...The lord of the manor, with his bagful of gold doubloons, set the agenda and aimed the spear...
...Editors tend to shower their writers with praise rather than coin...
...They have to keep writing and earning...
...he asked...
...They get away with it because there are so many writers and so few outlets for their wares...
...I liked Howard a lot...
...One can be certain that the castle proprietor granted his free-lancer as little leeway as possible...
...You're the first person who's shown any interest...
...Because free-lancers think they can do well by doing good, they are highly exploitable...
...Pageant, you may recall, was a digest-size, low-budget monthly that ran about three-dozen short articles every issue...
...Most of the bully pulpits in America are occupied by the rich and their servants...
...Fourth, I shouldn't have taken so long to finish the assignment, though the excessive time was understandable: Being a beginner, I was afraid to risk a mistake, an awkward phrase, a misplaced semicolon...
...Those early jobs permitted me to learn the rudiments of my craft at other people's expense...
...His loyalties were inner-directed rather than institutional...
...Howard was the lord of the manor...
...Against whom would we strike...
...For one thing, many writers double as editors, making them simultaneously the exploited and the exploiters...
...They get jobs in corporations or in government agencies and live happily, if unadventurously, ever after...
...She apparently preferred a happy husband to a full larder...
...Fifth, and the most difficult lesson of all: The article I was so proud of then strikes me now, on rereading, as barely adequate...
...In practice, though, the poor fellow had to make a living with his spear-to sting for his supper-which meant that the wars he fought and the enemies he impaled were not always of his choosing...
...A writer, in short, can starve from feelings of self-importance...
...Years ago I was offered $30,000plus expenses and royalties to write a small book about the Shell Oil company...
...Why don't you try it...
...William Allen White said it was the duty of an editorial writer to convert "his private prejudices into public issues," but White owned the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, a convenient medium for his message...
...The trick in free-lancing is to hold one's convictions dear even if compelled to sell one's talents cheap...
...You keep saying you're a writer," insisted Diane, my wife...
...I am in perpetual debt, for instance, to the trio that liberated my modest Muse: Diane, Howard and the man who fired me...
...And my piece was only one of 432 that Pageant would publish that year alone...
...Charge him what you think he's worth...
...Finally, inept as I seemed, I'd had the benefit of several years' journalistic experience-not a bad way to begin...
...Would you be willing to write about it...
...The fee was $300...
...He or she seeks romance...
...The five-figure offer confirmed for me some advice I'd been given once by an elderly free-lancer as we sat side-by-side in a Philadelphia bar...
...While the cost of living steadily climbs, writers' fees remain depressingly stable...
...From time to time some of us talk of organizing a union that might generate bargaining power in editorial offices throughout the land...
...Have you ever thought about Asian flu...
...Beginners were welcome...
Vol. 66 • March 1983 • No. 5
