Let me go, somewhere, anywhere
In my humble universe there are no globe trekking
freelance writers. Magazine money in the “cost centre”, as the editorial side is
known, is tight and the last thing editors can do with their squeaky budgets is
pay for us to zoom all over the place.
I can
count on one Bart Simpson hand the trips for which my magazines have kicked in more
than some (highly appreciated, eds!) gas and meal money.
Oh look!
Here’s a May 2000 invoice. I collected £160 ($352 then, or $281 today) for
meals and hotel for a road trip to the Stewart International Airport in upstate New York.
Oh look! Here’s one from June 2001. I
claimed $134.19 for meals, $185.04 for transportation, $98 for a hotel and
$42.73 for film and processing (look it up, kids) for a Calgary trip to profile
WestJet.
As excitable as this money was, it is couch
coin for regular business travellers on the corporate teat. I kick in cash for such
trips and, occasionally, so do my subjects.
WestJet,
for instance flew me to Calgary for free. It lent me its name so I could get
the corporate hotel rate. I lunched with the WestJet crowd and drank their dividends
party wine. I rode the bus.
In
2010 an advertiser wanted a magazine I write for to cover their new facility in
Edmonton. It offered to pay the first $1,000 of the trip cost and my busy editor
sent me me me!
In addition to my story fee, my editor, a
very fair man, and I negotiated a generous sum for two days of away time. I claimed
$312.58 in expenses, but good soldier that I am, I cut corners by food shopping
at Safeway, eating the free hotel breakfasts and vacuuming up its afternoon wine
& cheese spreads.
I have never taken a fully funded, damn the
torpedoes, we’re-still-in-the-sixties writing trip. But I have fun creating my
partially funded projects and spinning them into subsidized adventures.
Take, for example, my 2009 container ship
journey from Montreal to St. John’s and back. I cooked up two story ideas and
pitched them to two editors. I got the buy-in from the shipping company owner.
My magazines did not cover a penny of my
expenses, but I earned very honest money for those two stories and 13 published
photographs. To my delight, eight months later I received an unexpected bonus:
a Kenneth R. Wilson Memorial Award, Gold, for one of the stories, and $1,000.
The trick to managing this side of the trade is to
have a plan, catch a few waves and come away fairly well paid and happy.
At the Stewart airport I flew the perimeter
in a police chopper. WestJet let me return home via Vancouver and I saw a Pacific
sunset from the cockpit jump seat.
On the container ship, I ate with the
Captain three times a day. I saw Quebec City at 2 a.m. and Cape Ray at dawn the
next day. I marveled at the pitch black of ocean nights and the inland
moonscapes of southern Newfoundland. Between boats, I enjoyed four days of coastal
hiking, October blueberry picking and a ferocious blizzard.
I booked extra days in Edmonton and explored
the historic Old Strathcona district, the University of Alberta campus and
walked across the High Level Bridge.
Look
at the time! I think I’m overdue for my next adventure.
*Disclaimer: This is not me in this hotel
with this bottle of champagne. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S9ecXWCBCc&feature=kp>
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Copyright © Carroll McCormick 2014
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