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Interview With John
McCormick John McCormick has nearly 16,000 published, bylined pieces. He is 99.999 percent published with one (1) rejected column in the past 10 years. He sold that elsewhere. He lives with his favorite copy editor on an isolated 30 acre organic ranch where they raise hell, rare Jacob sheep, Limousin beef cattle, American Miniature Donkeys, Bouvier des Flandres dogs, and one emu. He is a longtime member of The National Press Club of Washington and also of the new Online News Association. In his copious spare time he plays with his collection of antique cars, serves as the local township's Emergency Management Coordinator, and as a Pennsylvania Certified Radiologic Monitor (HazMat officer). The latter two jobs are official appointments but volunteer positions, and he has a total budget of $25 per year for both, although the Commonwealth provides Geiger counters free of charge. Why did you begin writing? There were three big factors which all converged. I wanted to live in a rural area; I became disabled; and I wanted to learn about computers. Outside the coal mines, where I worked as a mechanic just previously to starting writing, there was little in the way of good paying jobs in my area and absolutely none for homebound workers. Also, the PC revolution was just starting and at a small school I attended in Boston years earlier had the motto: "Earn, Learn, and have Fun" with the emphasis on always getting paid to learn. (I paid for school by teaching Calculus.) How did you carve out your niche writing about computers and adaptive technology? Fortunately, I had a very strong background in hard sciences at three universities, and in computers. When I decided to try and make a living as a writer, I sat down and analyzed the market for trade publications, which was already massively tilted toward computers and high-tech back in 1980. With hundreds of potential paying markets and the fact that I had worked with mainframe computers back in the 60s, the choice was simple. What are the best and worst parts of the freelancing life? Personally, I haven't found anything bad. Part of that is due to my success; it's only recently as I near retirement that my income hasn't gone up every single year but obviously the lack of benefits and need to continually sell yourself is a major drawback for many potential writers. The best part is the freedom. Freedom from dependence on a single employer. Freedom to live where I want. Freedom to pursue new ideas. And Freedom from commuting. Many weeks I actually spend less time writing than some people spend driving to and from work. Have you ever encountered "deadbeat" editors/publishers? If so, how do you go about getting paid by delinquents? Out of more than 100 publishers, there was only one real deadbeat, a company in Birmingham, Alabama. There really isn't much you can do because pursuing them in court will cost more than you are likely to get paid and, in many cases, deadbeats don't pay anyone else, so trying to negatively influence their credit rating doesn't help. But I just let the negative energy go because even the deadbeat had paid me a lot over several years, they just left me with some unpaid work at the end. Since the editors also left and I had long term relationships with several of them, I just wrote off the publisher and let all my writer friends know about them. The best defense is to never do too much work for a single publisher on the cuff. I have always resisted taking on too many early assignments for any publisher, no matter how well known, until we had a solid relationship. Any tips for writing great query letters? Startle, amaze, and set yourself apart from all the others! Easier said than done, and I may not be the person to ask about this because my two book editors both approached me from reading my columns. Also, these days many editors love getting very short e-mails instead of formal letters. Once I have a relationship with an editor, our exchanges might go like this: ME: "Just got Widget 3.02, it ships next week. Interested? John" EDITOR: "450 words, next Tuesday? Jake" ME: "OK" I'm not kidding, I've written shorter queries and gotten the assignment. It's also important to keep trying. Several massively important jobs, including my first big assignment at the old Byte, came because one of my queries arrived the day another freelancer was fired. Where do you find markets for your work? My very first market lived next door. I lived on an old racing yacht and my neighbor had just graduated from Boston U. I had repaired his car several times and worked on other boats in the Marina. His took a job editing Cruising World, a boating magazine out of Newport, RI. My first published works (and the first I ever submitted for publication) became a series of articles on emergency boat repairs. My friend gave me the first assignment but his publisher ordered the next two. This was before the PC was invented and, since I can't spell and hate re-writes, I didn't try writing again until a few years later when I could use a word processor. At first I found markets right on the newsstand, but I also went to a library and went through a massive catalog of trade publications. What's the biggest mistake writers make? The absolute worst is trying to write before you have any experience. I talk with a lot of fresh college graduates who want to write. This is especially true of English or Lit majors. But just WHAT are they qualified to write ABOUT? They know about college life and about English Literature, but there's little market for those. I can't imagine what these people think they have to contribute yet. Of course I'm a non-fiction writer. A 14 year-old may have good fiction ideas. Any tips for negotiating with editors for better terms? I've never negotiated with any editor other than about deadlines and even that was very rare. There are a thousand people ready to write any given piece and editors know this. Except for a single deadbeat which was the publisher, not the editor, I have always been treated very fairly by editors and continue to correspond with many of them even when they move on to other jobs. How do you propose that writers should handle the tricky new issues of electronic rights? Do you ever sign all-rights contracts, or do you typically negotiate additional fees for additional uses? PC Magazine automatically includes 10% extra for electronic rights. Techrepublic.com is a Web service, so it's 100% electronic anyway. Personally, I write so quickly that I've never paid the slightest attention to rights. I sign whatever the publisher sends because I know I can always re-write the story for someone else if I need to. Editors can't purchase your ideas, only your precise words, so if you have non-competing markets just write the same piece using different words. Since I mostly write about technology, this is simplified by the fact that every publication has a different market segment and therefore the readers want different information or a different slant on the product. If you think I'm not a creative writer, you should try to write 6 reviews of the same new computer design for 6 different editors without ever repeating your words and still give the same basic information in each article. Where do you find ideas for your articles? How do you STOP getting ideas? If you can find out then please let me know so I can STOP writing! If reading one magazine article doesn't give you five ideas for other articles, then you're in the wrong business. What resources do you recommend for writers? (Classes, books, websites?) Beginning writers should explore absolutely EVERY source of possible help. Some writers will benefit from one Web site or book, others will find them useless, but inspiration will come from another. The only book I can universally recommend is the AP Style and Libel Manual. As for classes, I've taught freelance writing but only had one English course in college - I got a D. In general, I don't see how you can be a writer unless you read constantly. I own at least 10,000 books and every year since I was about 10 I have read a minimum of 200 books per year. That includes everything from encyclopedias and the World Almanac, to Sci-Fi, biographies, technical manuals, Tom Clancy, even War and Peace (three times). Not counting other writers, I may be the only person who has ever read Durant cover to cover. Lots of people own "The Story of Civilization," but how many have read all those volumes? I also had a set of the Harvard Classics and read most of them before I was 17. Other than that, read anything by Hunter S. Thompson, but don't take him too seriously. Anything further you'd like to add? I have lectured on freelance writing and the very first piece of advice I give aspiring writers is ALWAYS the same: Never show your work to anyone who isn't prepared to cut a check for it. No one but an editor is qualified to comment on your work. Not friends, not family, and above all, NEVER show commercial writing to a teacher. Whether they praise bad writing or denigrate your work because it doesn't meet their standards, this sort of feedback is worse than meaningless. They don't understand writing for publication or they would be doing it themselves. I always decline to read other writer's work, especially new writers, unless I'm getting paid to do so such as reviewing a book concept for a publisher. My second best piece of advice to new writers is keep writing and start selling immediately. If you aren't passionate about selling, even for a penny a word, then just keep a journal. Don't try to be a professional writer. Knowing your market is vital. I once bet my lady that I could get her published on the first try. I found two minor trade publications, one for women executives and one for volunteer fireman, had her read one copy of each cover to cover, gave her a topic for each and a deadline of one week. I refused to even look at her work when she finished, just mailed it off to the editors. She was greatly annoyed, but two checks arrived the next month and the sample copies arrived about a month later. To learn more about John and his work, visit his websites: and
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