I was in the merchant marine. I began to write while I was doing that, while I was at sea. And finally, one magical day, I got a letter when I got back north that said I’d sold a story. I sold one to a newspaper syndicate, and I was so excited I quit my job, I went ashore and I was going to be a writer.
Well, I sold the story for five dollars. On publication. It had taken me three months to research it. And they were willing to buy one story, sometimes two, a week. No more. So for almost six months, I lived on five dollars and sometimes ten a week. I lived on West 63rd Street, where Lincoln Center now is, and it cost me seven and a half dollars a week for the room; and I ate on whatever was left.
That’s Theodore Sturgeon on the sale of his first story, “Heavy Insurance”, in 1939. Sturgeon’s story output was so high that his complete short stories runs 13 volumes.
