"This Interview Is Over" or, how sausage is sometimes made.

After writing about some of the stories that got away, I remembered a harrowing experience that is probably more revealing about the job of celebrity journalism, though it's not much fun to relive it.

After stints as writer/editor at Rolling Stone and editor/writer at Vogue, I became a full-time freelancer -- and a father of two small children. One big difference about a staff job versus freelancing: freelancers get paid by the word.

Which means, you get paid the same for a two-hour sit-down with Alicia Silverstone and a couple of phone calls to people she worked with, as you do tracking down dozens of subjects for a long piece about, say, Mississippi flood victims (which I did for Vogue with photographer Mary Ellen Mark). You do the math.

So as much as I liked