I sold the first article I ever submitted. It was to Astronomy magazine. I sold the second article I ever submitted to Cat Fancy. The third article I submitted was accepted, too, by Reader's Digest.

This is where my writing horror story begins.

At the time, I was a public relations writer for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. My job was to write about dirt, eight hours a day, five days a week. I wrote about dirt to promote soil conservation. I interviewed soil scientists and ag professors about dirt, and then wrote about how to save it, how to treat it properly, and how not to pollute dirt.

Technically I was writing about soil, which sounds better than dirt, but dirt is dirt. After two mind-numbing years of writing about dirt, I wanted out!

So I made my move. I had an idea for Astronomy magazine. I dashed off my article and sent it. Then editor-in-chief Richard Berry accepted it. He wrote a glowing acceptance letter asking me to submit more articles. I still have that letter framed!

I was elated! After hearing a million stories about the endless initial rejections suffered by successful writers, I had pulled off a sensation! When my very next submission sold after my first, you can well imagine my confidence boost. When mighty Reader's Digest accepted my third piece, I felt invincible.

I quit my good paying, full-benefits job, and did what I had long dreamed of doing -- I moved to an isolated cabin in the whispering woods of northern Minnesota, far away from the urban clamor of the Twin Cities and began my career as a free--FREE!--freelance writer.

Sure I no longer had a steady paycheck, but my obvious ability to sell articles at will was all I needed. Indeed, the Reader's Digest piece alone promised $6,000. I could live for months on that while I cranked out more articles and waited for future checks to fill my mailbox like manna from heaven.

Exactly one week after I moved to my blissfully quiet cabin, a Reader's Digest editor called me to say he had decided to kill my article.

I was savagely disappointed, yes, but still brimming with confidence because Reader's Digest asked me to submit again. Also, I would be selling other articles soon, I thought. I hunkered down to write. I quickly cranked out a dozen more pieces and sent them out.

They came back. All of them. Rejected.

This was a blow. Even so, many came back with positive notes from editors, so I wasn't too worried. I was a proven, published writer. I had sold a couple of articles to major markets. I had also been a newspaper reporter for eight years before my dirt writer days. I even taught writing classes at the University of North Dakota. So I had experience, writing skill, good ideas, and confidence.

I wrote another three dozen articles and sent them out. They all came back.

By this time, I had been living my freelance dream without a paycheck for about four months. I was running out of money fast, but I was determined to succeed. Once you get a taste of freedom, nothing else will do. I kept writing.

My next 150 articles--yes, 150--were all rejected. I had been rejected by everyone, from the mighty, to the lowly. Crusty, obscure and minor publications with names like Festering Brain Sore Magazine and Night Slivers (yes, those are, or were, real publications!) spit back my articles to me like bad olives.

Publications that paid in copies only, publications I once scorned for their paltry standards, publications with circulations of 53 -- they all rejected me flat!

I came close dozens of times. An editor at Amazing Stories wrote me a note saying she had kept my story for nine months, reread it many times, found it fascinating, loved it, wanted to publish it, but finally decided to reject.

To come so close, and to fail--that's pain!

I was about 13 months into my freelance career by then. I was not dead broke. I was beyond
dead broke. I had defaulted on my student loan, I sold my car, I sold my television, I sold my stereo, I cannibalized everything from my life for cash. My credit rating was in the sewer.

I was lonely. No girlfriend. No social life. I lived in a cabin that now seem merely isolated, rather than blissfully isolated. I had no transportation. My mother lent me money for food--always a major humiliation! She frequently begged me to get a "real job." On top of all this, I suddenly developed an acute and wicked case of arthritis. I mean, one day I was healthy, and the next day practically crippled! I'm not exaggerating! It happened that fast. It was bad! I had swollen fingers. Merely walking on my inflamed ankles was an exercise in torture. An hour at the keyboard turned my knuckles purple and angry. I was in dire need of expensive medical care. I was psychologically demoralized.

I finally accepted defeat and grimly started sending out resumes seeking a job as a reporter or PR man. As bad as my situation was, going back to a "real job" seemed a fate worse than death. Still, I had no choice.

I sent out about a dozen resumes. All of them returned with "no thank you" letters. I sent out a dozen more, 50 more. Now my freelance rejection disease had somehow spread to my ability to get a "real job." Apparently my willingness to chuck my former job and my time away from reality had tainted me.

Now I was facing the possibility of a nonprofessional job: a fry cook, a janitor, a factory worker.

"My God!" I said to myself. "I'm going to end up an arthritic dish washer!"

But I couldn't even get hired as a dish washer! I was turned down for a bartender job, a salad maker and laborer at a dreary plastics plant. "What? You're a writer with an advanced college degree? You'd never be happy as a dish washer," I was told multiple times. "Your arthritis won't allow you to do this job," I was also told.

Then, on the very day I was about to submit to the ultimate humiliation--a trip down to the welfare office to request public assistance--a miracle. A phone call.

It was a small publisher calling -- totally out of the blue -- from Chino, California. They asked if I could ghost write a book about home health care remedies, and would I work cheap?

I was stunned. I was perplexed. The only thing I could think of to say was: "How did you get my name?"

The publisher, a naturalized American citizen from Bombay, India, told me with a thick accent: "I saw an article you published on the Internet about arthritis. Well written! I called directory assistance and got your number. Will you write this book for me? I'll give you a $3,500 advance. I'll pay another $3,500 if you finish in six weeks."

"Send the check," I said, "FedEx!"

The check showed up the next day. Three-and-a-half grand! A fortune! I wrote the book in a month. The publisher sent me the remaining $3,500. The book sold like a sure-fire cure for male pattern balding. The same guy advanced me $5,000 for a second book, with another $5,000 to follow. This second book was to be about how to boost your brain power.

While I worked on the brain power book, I began marketing myself as a ghostwriter to other publishers and individuals. The business flooded in! Suddenly, I was making $5,000, $10,000, and more, per month as a ghostwriter!

A single article I published on a Web Page which I had forgotten about, which I assumed few people read, and for which I was paid nothing, became my ticket, my springboard to a lucrative new writing career.

Today, cash rich, I still do not always write what I prefer to write, but I am free. As a ghostwriter, others get the glory and primary financial benefit from the many books I write. But I get what I want the most -- the be free, and to make my living as a writer. Today, I am married to a tall, lovely, blonde, Norwegian woman. I have health insurance, a nice house, a new car. My arthritis is under control.

I still make time to write for myself. I write magazine articles and science fiction stories in between ghosting projects. Perhaps one out of every two dozen sells. If I'm lucky, such a sale pays a couple of hundred bucks, but it no longer matters.

I write them for love -- and I'm free.

Please visit my profile here!