cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Grind of Meager Fame My expedition to the Everglades was pretty much a success. It was long and grueling and we didn't get a photo that I really needed for this article for 0utd00r Life magazine, but it was otherwise successful. I was on the road for almost 2 weeks doing this shit, hunting pyth0ns and fishing for t@rpon. I have been stalked by panthers and struck at by venomous snakes and lunged at by alligators and by the time I got home I had really had enough for a while. I was only home for about a day and a half when I had to get on a plane and fly to CT to speak at Y@le. Now that shit was a stunning success. They gave me a little plaque and everything. It was at the law school and the room was packed. On my resume forever. Now I am flat fucking broke and won't be getting paid by any of my editors for like a month, at least. I have no idea how I am going to pay the rent at the end of this month and I'm terrified. I need to come up with at least $1,350 really soon somehow. That's not including any other living expenses. N@t Ge0 came back and called me today begging me to host this show that is supposed to start filming in April. The production company I'm supposed to be working with has not done jack shit since December and I'm thinking of giving them the finger on developing that other show and just taking this gig with NG. 10 episodes are already greenlit and budgeted. It would be as sure a payday as I could ask for. I'd probably walk away with between $20-$40k for my troubles and be set for most of the next year if I live modestly. I finished the revisions on my next article for Sl@te tonight and then I boldly sent a pitch for another book to my publisher. On a whim, really. I had to do it right now because NG's book publishing division (part of the magazine, not the TV network) asked me to write a book for them. The book they want me to do after a few conversations would be the sort of thing my publisher for my last few books would also want to do, so I figured that I ought to try to get them both bidding on it. The tricky thing is that I have no fucking clue what kind of advance I might get for this. With this particular project, I wouldn't need to travel to write it and I think I could knock it out in a month or two. So I could take a shitty advance on it if I had to. I'd maybe take as little as $10k. I'm acting as my own literary agent now. This would be book number three, if it happens. I still think that I need to push harder on freelancing for magazines. I'm not pitching as hard as I should be. One feature for Men's J0urnal or something like that would pay around $8k. That shit pays so much better than writing books and its probably what I should be trying to do. This job. This weird fucking job. I'm stuck. I'm too famous for anyone to hire me for a regular job now. Like, imagine if Werner Herz0g walked into an HR department and applied for a desk job. Or tried to get a gig on a construction crew. They would be polite and obliging and respectful, but ain't no way that anyone would hire Werner Herz0g to manage financial transactions or frame a two story residential dwelling no matter how good he was at it. That is sort of where I am now. Well-known, but not enough to be a household name or really to be paid much of anything at all simply for being me. Oh, two nice things happened in the last few weeks. First, I was nominated for an award from the N@tional Association of Sc1ence Writers for a really huge piece that I wrote for Slate in December. And I'm not even a member of the NASW. Then I just found out that I was also nominated for a literary award for my most recent book. I'm good at the writing part. And the research and the part where I live the story. But I am still so shitty at the business and networking part of this job. 12:39 a.m. - 2013-02-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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