A Dollar a Word

A few weeks from now, absent some kind of cosmic intervention, some words that I wrote are going to appear in actual print. With my name attached. And for which I will have been paid. In real U.S. dollars.

This will be a first.

The piece is a departure from my usual fare, and it's a very different—and dramatically shorter—version of what I originally wrote for a class I took at the J-school a year and a half ago.

I wish that I'd tried to sell it sooner, and that more of it could be printed.

I'm nervous about seeing it in final, edited, fact-checked form.

I'm hopeful that I was somehow able to do justice to my subject.

I'm exhausted when I think of all the work I put into reporting and writing and endlessly rewriting the original piece.

I'm convinced that the pain experienced by a writer who's been asked to cut her story by 87% is almost—but not quite—offset by the value of the exercise, even if she gave up at the 80% mark and had the editor finish the job.

And I'm proud that the check that came in the mail today means I can say that part—a teeny, tiny, completely negligible part—of my income this year came from my work as a journalist.