Writing on deadline to an assignment

If I had my druthers -- if I had unlimited resources so money was literally no object -- would I want to abandon the grind of writing on deadlines and for specific assignments?

No. I'm 67, still writing within that grind, and hopeful that when it is my chance to die, I will die at my desk.

Why?

Having an assignment is grounding. It means I am responding to market demand. Somebody wants what I am producing. That realization is energizing, not enervating.

Also, writing on deadline to an assignment is exciting. Imagine looking at a blank window with just a quick note about the assignment at the top along the lines of "editor wants 600 words on BDC Cap cushions by 5." I have a good deal of material on BDC cap cushions spread out among different computer files and some of my interview material is in pen scrawls on old-fashioned dead tree notebooks.

But ... put them together into a coherent story in 600 words? Ah ... challenge!

I do still want to write something that will swing for the fences, earning me a place in posterity's lists of important economic/financial thinkers of the early 21st century. But I am willing to do that in the interstices allowed me while fulfilling editorial demands tuned in to the market.

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