The cover story of this month’s issue of Speechwriter’s Newsletter is devoted to an amusing and instructive article on what happens when a freelance speechwriter is called in at the last minute to write a short speech for a major occasion -- and the writer and the client are both vague about what the effort will cost.

For me, the money quote (Sorry!) of the article is this: “We can debate whether freelancers should charge by the project, by the spoken minute or by the hour, but one thing is clear: $85 an hour is too low a rate for a freelance speechwriter to charge, especially for a rush job which should command a premium. Why? Because – again, especially during a rush job – it’s impossible to credibly tally enough hours to reach a reasonable total fee for the job.”

SN thinks that $150 an hour is the minimum that an experienced speechwriter should charge – and gets no argument from a freelance speechwriter like me.

Thornton Wilder was right: Writers are patsies, because we do it for love. Perhaps that is true of artists in general, but I can think of at least one exception to this rule – the painter James MacNeill Whistler.

Whistler may be best remembered for the rather stodgy portrait he did of his mother, but most of his other works were anything but grey and black. In fact, one of them – “The Falling Rocket” – drew from the famed critic John Ruskin the scathing comment that he had “never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.”

Whistler retaliated by suing Ruskin for libel, demanding a thousand pounds in damages. He didn’t get the money, but he managed to get the last word while being cross-examined by Ruskin’s lawyer.

The lawyer demanded to know how long it took Whistler to “knock off” one of his paintings.

Whistler replied that he could sometimes “knock off” a painting in a matter of a few days.

The lawyer’s voice rose insinuatingly: “And that was the labor for which you asked two hundred guineas?”

“No,” Whistler replied stoutly. “It was for the knowledge gained through a lifetime.”

It is the knowledge gained through a lifetime that really determines what a speechwriter is worth. Very often, the writing time may be brief. What the client is paying you for is your ability to make the topic of the moment seem fresh, lively arresting, humorous, inspiring – or all of the above. If you can do that, and if the worth of the speech is confirmed by the reaction of the audience, then you deserve to be compensated accordingly – whether you’ve devoted two weeks or two days to the project