Adapt or Wait Tables. Carol Wolper

to tell you the check is in the system. They say this as if there’s nothing any mere mortal can do to hurry the process along. More waiting ensures and more disappointment.

      Often what’s going on here is that the magazine has cash flow problems and are waiting for advertising dollars to flow in, but that shouldn’t be your problem. You don’t go into a restaurant, order a meal, then tell them you’ll pay the bill when your cash flow situation improves. The magazine ate the verbal soufflé you prepared, and now they need to pay up. Of course that argument will only guarantee you’ll never get hired again.

      The typical outcome is that the check eventually shows up, and when it does you become acutely aware of just how little you’re being paid for so much work and aggravation. It could lead you to reconsider your career choice or conclude that writing for magazines is a job only rich kids can afford.

      There are also money issues on the higher end of the payment scale. Writing for Hollywood can seem like nirvana in comparison to freelancing for magazines but there are glitches that can create havoc…or worse.

      Take the case of a writer, who got a deal to write a television movie, an adaptation based on a nonfiction book. Her agent closed the deal, then gave her the green light to start working on a detailed outline. These kinds of outlines can run up to twenty pages, or more. It can takes weeks, months, to complete—even longer if your producer (or network executive) keeps changing the show’s direction. Re-writing is part of the gig. Continually taking apart a twenty-page outline is a life sentence.

      In this case, the writer worked for months without receiving any financial compensation. When she called her agent to ask what was holding up her commencement check (due on signing the deal) plus the check for finally turning in the revised outline, she was told that the network was waiting for the author of the book—the source material for the script—to close her deal.

      This is the moment when screaming “WTF” is definitely understandable.