Short Story Wednesday Review: One Thousand Dollars A Word by Lawrence Block

From the magnificently massive archive here at Casa Tipple and Home Eatery Library…

 

It is a very familiar plight for just about any writer. James “Jim” Trevathan wants a raise and after twenty years he doesn't think it is unwarranted. He is a writer for a magazine edited by Warren Jukes. Jim has been placing stories nearly every month for over twenty years and still gets only 5 cents a word. He wants and deserves more.

Editor Warren Jukes isn't prepared to pay more. In his mind there is no need. If Jim wants more money, he better produce more stories each month. Or, he can just hit the road as Warren isn't about to pay more no matter how much he likes the guy.

What Jim will do to get his raise is what drives the second half of this simple, and yet complicated at the same time, story. Sure to touch a nerve with any writer, One Thousand Dollars A Word, is way too real. It is also a very good crime story that first was published in 1978 in AHMM.

The book also contains chapter one from Lawrence Block's latest book, The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons.

  

Material was picked up during the author’s free read promotion for my use in an objective review.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2013, 2022

Review: "One Thousand Dollars A Word" by Lawrence Block

It is a very familiar plight for just about any writer. James “Jim” Trevathan wants a raise and after twenty years he doesn't think it is unwarranted. He is a writer for a magazine edited by Warren Jukes. Jim has been placing stories nearly every month for over twenty years and still gets only 5 cents a word. He wants and deserves more.

Editor Warren Jukes isn't prepared to pay more. In his mind there is no need. If Jim wants more money he better produce more stories each month. Or, he can just hit the road as Warren isn't about to pay more no matter how much he likes the guy.

What Jim will do to get his raise is what drives the second half of this simple, and yet complicated at the same time, story. Sure to touch a nerve with any writer, One Thousand Dollars A Word” is way too real. It is also a very good crime story that first was published in 1978 in AHMM.

The book also contains chapter one from Lawrence Block's latest book The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons.

One Thousand Dollars A Word

Lawrence Block

http://www.lawrenceblock.com

Self Published

November 2013

ASIN: B00GEFYB5U

E-Book

Estimated 17 pages

Material was picked up during the author’s free read promotion for my use in an objective review.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2013

Kindle Freebie: "One Thousand Dollars A Word" by Lawrence Block

The description on the Amazon page...

It's not hard to figure out where "One Thousand Dollars a Word" came from. The situation it describes was authentic enough, although I never heard of anyone who found the protagonist's particular solution to this dilemma.

Back in the first half of the twentieth century, and even well into the 1950s, a prolific writer could make a respectable living writing short fiction for magazines. There was a great profusion of markets; the better ones paid generously, and even the markets of last resort would put food on a writer's table.

TV and paperback books changed everything. Magazines folded left and right, not to mention right and left. The ones that survived were hardly thriving. They had to hold the line, and they did so by making their payment to writers the world's sole hedge against inflation. Everything else went up in price; a writer's words stayed where they were, or drifted gently downward. Some writers crossed the street to write paperback novels, or crossed the country to write television shows. But there were others who were born to write short stories, and that left them high and dry, and even dry and high.

Thus this story. It was, as you might imagine, hugely popular among writers; Whenever our paths crossed, one colleague simply intoned, "One. Thousand. Dollars. A. Word," sighed, and walked off shaking his head. It's been anthologized from time to time over the years, and I included it in Sometimes They Bite as well as my omnibus collection, Enough Rope.

Its first appearance, ironically enough, was in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in 1978, where it earned its creator the munificent sum of 5¢ a word.


As part of his "Orange Wednesday" program the short story is free and availble here at  One Thousand Dollars a Word