The Big Article

We're all looking for a big break, right? Well, I just may have gotten one, in the form of an article I sold to the Christian Science Monitor, a paper of international renown and repute. Here it is:

Sound Lands on Google Earth

Not only did it end up in the Monitor, the article was also picked up by USA Today, the ABC News website, and was reported to have been at the top of Google News. It's no exaggeration to say it's been seen by millions of people. I was pretty happy to make $400 on the deal, which is a lot more than I'm used to... but someone said, "Shouldn't you make more, taking into account the circulation?"

I don't know. Hopefully it will translate into something I can make a living off of. Naturally, I'm trying to milk my success for all it's worth, querying like mad, using the credit as a selling point for the innate wonderfulness of my prose. Oh, I've got lots of ideas. Are you an editor? Do you want to hear them? Just ask!

I had an interesting conversation with my housemate Craig today. He's a jazz guitarist, and we discussed the value of writing versus music. I posited that writing is valued more in our culture than music, in that everyone who graduates high school is expected (hopefully) to be able to write a coherent sentence, while only a small percentage can write a line of music. Ironically, that means musicians are valued more when it comes to performing. After all, we all can put a few words together, right? But only the talented among us can make music, or so it seems. So, anyone who knows a few songs can get a $50 gig playing in a bar, whereas a writer may takes years to earn the same. But in all fields, anyone who truly excels can rise to the top and make scads of dough.

Hopefully I've been at this gig long enough. Baby needs a new pair of shoes!

UPDATE: Things are going well - just landed an assignment for the "Unusual Westerners" section of the High Country News.