The Check in the Mail

February 20th, 2009, a dear old friend forwards me an email query from a respected editor in England, asking my friend for a submission to a planned anthology of personal essays on Gay & Lesbian writers "everyone should read." This makes sense. My friend is a reputable novelist, travel writer, and editor. He has an academic day job teaching football players to write in paragraphs. He also teaches a course on the personal essay. He lectures by invitation on Henry James. He writes published reviews. He is also queer as a three dollar bill. Even were we not acquainted personally, I should think him a natural and necessary contributor to any such anthology as the one then proposed. My friend agrees to do an essay, and suggests Ronald Firbank as his subject. My friend also suggests me.

I am more than flattered. Frankly, I'm a little stunned to actually hear from the editor in England. No small thing, I should think, agreeing to read a submission from the unknown friend of my friend. My qualifications being that I too am a three dollar bill and I read -- a lot. In discussing the anthology in emails, I happen to champion an obscure gay novelist named Coleman Dowell. Turns out, the editor and I share this enthusiasm. Just luck. The essay gets written, and rewritten, and rewritten, and well before the final deadline, it gets sent off, such as it is, and accepted. I am to be paid fifty dollars, on publication of the book, plus two complimentary copies. This, as I understand it, is much the usual way of these things. I wouldn't know. I haven't been paid to write... well, ever, really. Months later, the book comes out. Not waiting for my complimentary copies, I buy half a dozen or more, to give to friends and family. Eventually, long after I'd forgotten them and no longer had anyone really to whom I might send them, my two free copies come in the mail. I give these away as well, though to people who probably might have been content without. Still, feels pretty good.

The book, though still in print, has, by the time I write this, come and gone. It was not much reviewed, as there are now few enough places where it still might be. It is mentioned here and there online and in what is left of the GLBTQ press, presumably sells a few copies in addition to the ones I bought, and drifts away into what we call in the trade, "backlist". (This means you may still buy a new copy, if you're interested.) Eventually, even the copy that's been loyally kept on the shelf at the bookstore where I work is returned to the publisher and there's an end to it, so far as I'm concerned. Wonderful experience for me, very satisfying seeing my name in print, and on the world goes.

I can not remember ever getting paid, and that vexes me a little, though I've hardly been counting on the fifty bucks, but still...

I come home from work a couple of days ago to find, along with yet more bills for what was after all just a one night stay in the hospital, a month ago, a strange envelope with what looks to be a check in it. How strange. To my knowledge, no one I know owes me money. I recognize neither the company name printed on the check nor any reason why they may want to make me a gift of fifty bucks. There is no letter or other explanation in the envelope with the check. At first, the stub is no help, as I can't quite figure out what "PERMISSION-0119" means as an invoice number, or what, in the description line, what "50 g& l books everybody..." might mean. Bit thick, me. When it finally dawns on me what it is that I finally hold in my hand, I crow, and then laugh, and then take the check in to show the good husband the evidence that I will indeed now be in a better position to keep him in his old age, being as I'm now a paid, professional writer. I have to remind him about the book, which he has understandably forgotten, but no matter.

The check is dated 05/13/2011. The book was published November 9, 2009. Seventeen months. Better than two years from the time I wrote the essay until I was paid for it -- unless you count the free copies of the book.

I wish we got such terms from our vendors at the bookstore.

I describe all of this not to express any bitterness with either the very nice editor of the book or with the very kind media company that finally cut me the check. Blessings on them both, and thank you. Do keep me in mind hereafter. I mention this business because it made me laugh right out-loud. Honestly, it really did. By the time I'd sussed out that the check was not in fact a Nigerian investment scam or a promotion for a new phone, I could not have been more pleased, or amused to think that I had, in fact, quite forgotten, after all this time, that the proof of my marketability as a writer had never actually been confirmed heretofore. For about a minute before I deposited the check, I thought seriously about framing it. Money's already been spent, though.

Can't tell me nothin' now.

I do wonder anyone makes a living from this kind of thing, or that anyone ever did. I was reminded of Goldsmith, probably reduced yet again to his shirt, having pawned his trousers and shoes, sending for Dr. Johnson to read the manuscript of a novel. This, quoted of the good Doctor, from Irving's life of the novelist:

"I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion: I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill."

The Vicar of Wakefield, one of the most popular novels in the English language, never out of print since it was published in 1766, nearly two years after the incident described above, probably some five years after Goldsmith wrote the book.

I don't mean to compare either my little squib with the famous story of the beloved Vicar, or my story with poor Goldsmith's. It is worth noting that that sixty pounds that Johnson negotiated for the book, while paid promptly enough to satisfy even Goldsmith's irate landlady, was probably the last money the novelist had from that immortal work, which even then must have earned it's original publisher hundreds if not thousands of pounds, to say nothing of the money that book has been making for publishers ever since. I don't know that the anthology to which I contributed but one of fifty short essays has ever even earned back for the publisher whatever was the advance paid to its editor. I am also so situated as to have never been forced to even contemplate pawning my shoes.

Still, does my experience, as described above, really suggest progress, do you think, or was Johnson not wise to get those guineas paid into his hand before he went back to rescue Goldsmith? Indeed, wasn't Goldsmith quite right to have spent that first gift on a good bottle of Madeira?

Cheers!