Thank you, SO MUCH, to our readers and our subscribers. Because of your support, we are now able to offer $25 per contribution for pieces published in The Mudsill.
This is a big deal for our writers, and a really big deal for me.
Let me explain…
Last fall, Slate editor Rebecca Onion contacted me after seeing my curmudgeonly live-tweeting of the White House History Conference. She gave me the opportunity to write up my thoughts in longer form as a way of explaining to Slate readers why practically every U.S. historian on Twitter was running around with our hair on fire. I was excited for the opportunity and I agreed to get her something really quickly.
We didn't discuss pay. In fact, originally she was going to do a Q&A interview with me; I was the one who suggested writing it up myself. Certainly Slate doesn’t pay interview subjects. But, since I flipped the script, I wondered, “Is this a paid thing?”
I almost didn’t write her back to ask about it. I have done a great deal of writing for my field (intellectual history) online these past ten years for no compensation at all beyond the satisfaction of contributing to the conversation in my field. And I have written guest essays at other sites for free—I am always glad for the opportunity, always (still!) surprised that someone would ask me for a written piece.
Now, the last time I had been paid for my writing was 2016, the year I got the advance on the book that I am still writing. I have felt very glum about taking so long to finish that. In fact, I’ve been so discouraged about that project that I’ve felt I wasn’t worth paying, that the modest advance was money wasted by my press.
So, as Anne Lamott might say, that’s how you know my inner writer has been listening to too much Radio KFKD.
Something told me that the Slate piece might be a way to change the channel. I thought, “Well, this is a Real Magazine I’m writing for, and even though it’s a small piece, I should ask for something.” So I did. And Rebecca spoke with her managing editor and was able to arrange for remuneration. She didn’t know how much it would be, but she warned me it would not be a lot.
She was right; the pay was in the mid two figures.
Still, I got paid for my writing. In Slate, a magazine that people beyond academe know and read. In fact, I realized as I thought about it, this was my first story to run in a national publication aimed at the “general educated reader.”
That was a solemn epiphany for me, and as I began to meditate on what that really meant, I was overcome with gratitude. I dropped Rebecca a note:
Just a quick note to thank you for inviting me to write that Slate piece and for handling the awkward business of payment. The amount of payment didn't matter to me -- but it mattered, more than I realized, to be paid.
I haven't been paid for a piece of writing since 2016. It never occurred to me that this long spell of putting words on the internet for the reward of the work and its reception alone may have been affecting the quality and the force of my writing. I have been so hopeless about this book project, and so uninspired and uninspiring in the writing I do from the heart, for the heart.
I wish I had the instincts to set the heart aside and just write for the belly or the checkbook. Alas, i think I have the worst of both worlds -- needing to write soulfully and get paid to do it. I mean, who doesn't want that, but who among us now can possibly survive like that? Nobody pays for that any more.
But pursuing that small payment from Slate was something important I needed to do for myself, a way of reminding myself that my words and my work are worth something beyond the satisfaction they give me. I can call myself a professional writer and believe it.
I felt like a goober and a dork for sending such a personal email to a professional editor. But I wanted her to know how much the writing opportunity meant to me. She wrote back and was very kind and encouraging, and I felt slightly less goofy about my email.
That small one-off piece for Slate, and the payment for it, reminded me of who I am, who I have worked to become over my whole life since I was a sophomore in high school: a writer whose work is worth paying for.
And you know what? The same may be true for contributors to The Mudsill.
I know that because I recently received a similar email from a potential contributor. They sent me their piece, and I said that I would be glad to consider it for publication, and they wrote back with an email that began, “You don’t know how much this means to me…” and told me their story of re-discovering the writer they have always been.
So thank you—so much—for simply reading this publication. Thank you for being the humane, thoughtful readers who may be the first audience a writer or artist has ever been able to reach—or the first audience they’ve been able to reach in a while. Please, please share our issues with as many of your friends as you can—on Facebook, on Twitter, among your friend groups. Help them grow their audience.
And thank you to those who have been able to become paid subscribers. I know that not everyone can do that, certainly not in these unsteady days, but those who can do so have stepped up and are already making a big difference for our contributors. Our first issue featured artwork by a young artist who had never before had a piece of artwork published. Your support made that happen, and you have given a blessing to a young artist that will follow her through her whole career.
In such a dark time, that is light indeed.
With gratitude,
Lora Burnett