Vampire!

    Researching a story on top of a roller coaster? How did I manage this? One of my niches is writing maintenance articles on manufacturing equipment. One Father’s Day at Montreal’s La Ronde amusement park, it struck me that the rides were like production lines, with fun the product. I thought, “Maintenance article!” My editor bought my pitch.

    During my cook’s tour to see the machinery, I climbed the 32-metre high Vampire. The view was stunning and, OMG, the Vampire trembles in the wind! My daring piece made the magazine cover.

See: <http://www.mromagazine.com/news/perfect-ride/1000211014/?type=Print%20Archives>

Copyright © Carroll McCormick 2014

The Girl

   My daughter, in my helicopter ditching course? Credit coincidence, nerve and generosity: I had positioned myself in Nova Scotia to take the course for my article. My daughter was flying into Halifax from Mexico to meet me. Adventurer that she is, she also wanted to take the crash course.

   I hadn’t thought it appropriate to ask the company owner if she could come, but when he mentioned having invited the 80-something dad of a participant to suit up, I took the plunge. “Sure,” the owner replied to my request. I casually blew my daughter’s mind with the news after I picked her up at the airport.

See: <http://www.helicoptersmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4490&Itemid=145>

Copyright © Carroll McCormick 2014
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Please Release Me*

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.

Crunch Crunch Crunch

2013: a calculated performance

   It’s nice to think you’re wonderful, but can you prove it? Dreamers soar like gas balloons on their good feelings, but I, as the Mercenary Pen, prefer more pedestrian, “can I pick it up with tweezers” measures of my performance.

   I track several variables that tell me how I am doing from day to day, year to year. I began tracking my hours in May 2005, and can report to within five minutes a year how little, er, much, I’ve worked ever since. I also track my annual income (a tax requirement anyway) and the number of articles for which I’ve collected my beans each year (as opposed to the number worked on, as there are always projects and payments that straddle the Dec/Jan dateline).