The romantic world of the freelance writer: no boss, no dress code, and as James Sallis notes in the Boston Globe, no health insurance, sometimes no income and often no respect. (There's no way around it, says the Babu, the more you attempt to get away from the stereotype of the writer starving in a garret, the more it boomerangs back. Not everyone's a retired First Lady with an $8 million advance, after all.)