SECTION TWO
M AG I C N U M B E R S
by Steve Griffin
PHOTO CREDIT: STEVE GRIFFIN
“I’ve covered speedskating races, pipe-smoking contests, plastic-
surgeon services, oil-well fires, new-business openings and things just
as odd or odder, all to keep the wolf from the door. ”
Craft Improvement Committee chair Mike Schoonfeld
posed an interesting question to me:
“How do you establish the amount for which
you are willing to work?”
offered me, a bag of groceries at a time. For newspapers
I’ve covered speedskating races, pipe-smoking contests,
plastic-surgeon services, oil-well fires, new-business
openings and things just as odd or odder, all to keep
the wolf from the door.
Not, How do you find markets that pay decent fees?
Get your mainstay markets to pay more? Expand your
base of markets? I wrote for any magazine that gave me a
go-ahead, even if (when) getting paid was
harder work than writing the story.
No, this question is between me and me:
When is it worthwhile to sit down at the
keyboard (or pick up the mic, or still or vid-
eo camera)? And when is it not? With the backing of school-teaching wife and de-
spite some utility turn-off notices and some insuffi-
cient-funds-check fees, it worked, mostly, but the pace
was wearying.
It’s a bedrock question we don’t consider often enough, Then, teaching a magazine and feature writing course as
an adjunct instructor in Central Michigan University’s
Journalism Department (one of several income-sweet-
eners through the years, I did the math. Ostensibly a
particularly the full-timer freelancer.
For much of my career, I’ve done whatever work was
Volume 01 No. 03 | 2017