About ten years ago I was trying to decide what kind of Easter program I wanted to produce at church. The play I was working on wasn’t ready and I needed something fast. Then I thought, what if I took my poems about the passion and turned them into dramatic readings? That’s exactly what I did and the result was fantastic.
After the performance I began shopping the program around. National Drama Service liked it and contracted me for it. I was excited, because the payment was larger than anything I had received up to that time. Unfortunately, the editor was over-ruled on the program and it was cut from the final printing. The powers-that-be decided it was too hard to present dramatic poems. But since I was already contracted, I received the full payment, plus five complimentary copies of the issue that the program didn’t appear in. Well, their bad decision was my good fortune.
Another publishing company wanted to program, but couldn’t fit it in to their publications that year and asked me to resubmit if I didn’t find another publisher. Well, I found another publisher. Meriwether Publishing liked the program and published it. I was contracted for the work and I was on a royalty payment plan that maxed out at a certain amount of money. I maxed out in three years. In some ways I thought the contract was unfair because I was only making 10% of the proceeds and if I was making money, then they were making money. But it was also a foot in the door and the beginning of what I hope will be a long relationship. The editor said that they always gave new writers that contract because they were taking the chance. Hopefully, our future contracts will be a win-win situation. But how can I complain? Two companies paid me for the work.
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