I love the fall, but that doesn’t stop me from mourning the end of summer, and so Tim Kreider’s funny, wistful editorial in the New York Times, “The Summer that Never Was,” struck a particularly resonant chord.

My goals for the summer were more modest than Kreider’s (he was planning to spend a few weeks in Iceland) but I realized that I’ve read far fewer books than I planned, spent less time on my bike than I hoped, and failed utterly in my plan to teach myself to a) garden or b) grout.

Kreider’s article not only measured the (sad) space between best laid plans and actual outcomes, he also captured another facet of summer—one particular to publishing. He writes “though all other transactions in the 21st century are conducted electronically and instantaneously, the process of paying writers is apparently still carried out by scriveners and counting-houses and small boys dispatched with shillings in their hands…”

This made me laugh—rather, snort—aloud. All other aspects of the business may continue to hum along, but the process of getting an author paid does slow down, inevitably and inexcusably. The round robin of vacation-takers seems to insure that all of the necessary parties are never present when it comes to drafting agreements, executing them, signing off on payments and cutting checks. I’ve conducted no formal studies on this matter, but in summertime, livin’ is not always so easy for those who write for theirs. Houses expect professionalism from their authors, and authors should expect that they will be paid in a timely way. My job is to speed the process as much as I can, but (with regrets to Bartleby and his fellow scriveners) I think the process itself needs some modernizing.