So it finally happened, give me the little writer’s merit badge I so excitedly earned this week. I managed to sell a piece for professional payment. Not token payment, not semi-pro payment, full-on full-price story rates. I can’t tell you how delighted that makes me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how quickly my career has progressed in retrospect. It’s amazing how when I’m slugging through it every week or month seems like a small eternity without any payoff, but looking back I have already had a lot of my effort and work rewarded. The arts are the arts and I know it is always a gamble, but there’s something to be said for practising your craft everyday and then putting in those 10,000 hours trying to get the world to see it, understand it, appreciate it, and love it.

It was a long week because we butted heads (in a very diplomatic, easy-to-talk-through way) about exactly what rights they could have to the story. The agreement we finally signed still gave them a lot of rights (for instance, I’m pretty sure it is within their power to turn my story into a five season sitcom without paying me royalties, but they have to credit me as the author, so even if that improbability came to fruition, I don’t think I would be too frumped up about it.)

What was important to me was just that I maintained my intellectual property rights, and after a little negotiation we figured out a way for the contract to give me that and all the freedom I would need to write and produce whatever I want to with the ideas and concepts later on.

I sold it for a starting-up literary venture, sort of an avant-garde publication since it will be delivering it’s content via app and be geared to mobile users. They’re interested in storytelling for the twenty-first century, and I can definitely get behind that. It is neat to see yourself connected to the something that might be the cutting-edge of something new and big. I will be sure to link everyone everywhere to the story/app once it hits the market.

This is a big step forward, even if it was just a little story. Plus, it is nice to have some money in my pocket. Heck, it’s FANTASTIC to have money in my pocket that came from doing something I love. That means a lot to me, and I certainly like this feeling. I think I will have to experience more of it…