Am I Boring You With This — or Are You Interested a Writer’s Life, 2021?
I fear that your answer is, “Not that again, Melinda!”
Perhaps I’m wrong; perhaps you do care about the perils of online publishing. My evolution as a writer parallels other changing fields.
I am like a lamplighter after cities installed electric lights, a blacksmith after cars caught on, a milkman. Well, not exactly. Writing has not disappeared; publishing has drastically changed. If what you once did for a living has morphed into something else, you might want to read on…
I face this reality every day as I approach my computer. I started writing on a typewriter. When I first got into publishing, linotype and ink were still being used to put words on a page. The word processors, then computers, and, now, everything’s digital.
Thankfully, I can still practice my craft. I am not obsolete. Writing (I pray!) will always be essential to human existence — an art as much as a tool.
But writing professionally lacks the trappings of the old days: the brick-and-mortar magazine companies and publishers, their offices, their libraries and staffs, editors to check in with. Now, I’m pretty much on my own.
But even back then, Aunt Ruth’s words rang true: “Honey, you’ve chosen the hardest profession.”
Writing has never been easy. As Margaret Atwood put it:
Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.
And now there’s more to whine about…
As an Old School journalist writing online, I often wonder the best way to approach the perils of online publishing. Here are just four of the questions I ask myself, over and over…
- Should I write for a platform other than Medium? If you read me, you know that I write mostly here and on Medium. On occasion, Shareable and other online magazines publish my work. While I don’t spend a lot of time obsessing about other opportunities, an article like “Don’t Be Stupid — Post Your Words on More Than One Platform,” can send me down the rabbit hole. The author, David B. Clear, claims that that “platform promiscuity” is the way to go — just “repurpose” my old stuff. Gain greater exposure and maybe make more than the $6.29 I earned on Medium so far in November.
The article inspires me — once again — to consider and check out Quora, Substack, and NewsBreak, big platforms, each with different angles and reputations. Googling further, I discover articles like “54 Writing Platforms That Pay.“
I want to go back to bed. But I write this piece instead. On my blog, no less — despite those articles that warn me not to “waste time” on my own website.
- Should I have been more diligent these many years about collecting my readers’ emails? Too late for me, I conclude. But thank YOU, dear reader, if you’ve given me your email!
So why am I still asking the question? Because I’ve just received another offer promising to teach me how to do it. The “expert” is a writer with a huge following who already has my email address.
The new paradigm for writers is all about creating a community. I love that, and I want in. In the old days, I met readers only on book tours and through the occasional letter (remember those?). I cherished fan mail. But I couldn’t reach thousands of people.
Now everyone in the world is a potential reader — clearly, way beyond Dunbar’s number of 150, which, supposedly, is how many people we can “know.”
Today, it takes a database to raise a village. Ugh. I didn’t sign up for this.
- Should I ask readers to pay? I know. I wrote about this before. On one hand, I wonder, how different am I than the clochard on my street in Paris, who sits on the ground outside the bakery with a tin cup? On the other hand, I’m not just sitting here. Even a post like this a day, some take several. I’m already asking you to become a member of Medium, so that I might earn 50% of that whopping $5/a month fee (see below). Should I be doing more?
Some writers charge subscription fees to augment their income. They cut out the middleman. Others go the crowd-sourcing route.
If you like what I wrote, you can tip me directly, instead of my having to wait for this platform’s algorithm to reward me…
Okay, they don’t spell it out quite that way. More often, writers simply ask readers to “buy me a cup of coffee” at the end of each piece they write, linking to sites like KoFi, BuyMeACoffee, or Patreon.
A cup of coffee? Really? I finally found an article in which one writer was honest enough to say that through one or more of those sites, he made “a few dollars every now and then.” Is it worth my time for me to read the fine print and give out my bank information? I don’t think so.
- Should I stick to ONE niche? “They” say I should. It’s how readers get to know you and trust you. You become their go-to person when they need information or advice. Even better, write several articles a day on that subject, so they can’t live without you. Once you have gaggles of followers and fans Googling your work, you become an “influencer” — a Go-To-in-Chief.
My problem — actually, it’s a gift — is that I’m interested in many things. The vast majority of my work is about relationships, family, and social phenomena, but as Peggy Lee famously sang in 1969, “Is That All There Is?“
I once wrote an article about home schooling, even though I had no interest in the subject. Going in, I knew next to nothing and assumed home-schooling parents would be weird and radical. But it was an assignment; I did my job. To my surprise, I learned a lot and genuinely liked some of the interviewees. Discovery never disappoints.
Why deprive myself of such surprises now? Today, with no assignments, few editors, and scant guidelines, I’m free to explore and, thankfully, I’m still curious. I love finding new ideas, mining new worlds. I’ve paid my dues and have nothing to prove. I can write about anything I want.
There are other questions:
- Should I make more of an effort to write catchier titles and learn the tools that sometime bedevil me, like SEO — search engine optimization.
- Should I take the free tutorials I tend to skip? I’ve been on Hoot Suite for years, and still know only the basics. A twentysomething taught me hashtags, but I’m not sure I learned.
- Should I just keep doing the same thing — basically, winging it when it comes to social media and SEO — or come up with a more ambitious and consistent plan and actually execute said plan?
- Should I take courses from a writer/marketing experts? More importantly, am I be willing to do what they recommend? I’ve watched several YouTube videos, but that only sparks a recurrent rescue fantasy:
A friend calls to say, “I have a wonderful, knowledgeable person who’s willing to market your work for you. All you have to do is write.”
The only question I don’t ask myself…
The only question I don’t ask is, “Why am I still writing?” I don’t need to write. I’ve written or co-written 15 books and stopped counting articles at “over 200” — a number that now sounds low compared to online writers who churn out that many in a year. Still, I can’t stop myself from trying to reach people with my words.
I write because it is who I am and what I do. As I say in a recent Medium story, “How a Good Writer Is Like a Tournament Tennis Player“…
Sometimes, I falter; I hit the net and lose time. I start over. But the court is where I am my most comfortable and happiest me. It’s a good struggle, because I know that eventually I’ll get it.
Margaret Atwood is right: Publishing is “like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea…”
I tried to find the exact source of that quote — it appears on several sites offering advice to new writers. I was curious about when Atwood wrote it. Since she writes mostly fiction, my best guess is that it’s from Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983-2005 — in other words, before publishing migrated online.
What Atwood described 16 years ago is even truer today. Every word we writers send out to the universe through our blogs, our tweets and posts, and on the many platforms that host our work:
Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.
So why keep at it?
For that answer, I leave you with this quote from Anne Lamott, a deep thinker, a humorist, and a fabulous writer:
I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do—the actual act of writing—turns out to be the best part. It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward.
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In the comments section, please…
Writers: I would love to hear your questions and your answers. Both as a writer and as a reader.
Readers: What does this new world look like from your perspective. Do you “follow” certain writers. Or do you read because of a title that catches your eye? Do you think writers should ask you to pay to read them?
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In case you missed this recent piece on Medium, “The 50-Year-Old Idea About Work That Still Works,” it leads with an anecdote about my daughter, the newly-minted nurse….
Jen graduated nursing school in June — a remarkable accomplishment on many levels but more so at age 52. Her three sons were 10, 14, and 16 when she enrolled. A month ago, after her eldest started college, she started her new job as a case manager for home hospice.
My daughter’s latest career follows a long line of interesting and worthwhile work. She earned a masters in health promotion and, before becoming a mom, worked in several jobs designing and administering fitness, nutrition, and stress-reduction programs. She went back to school to become an EMT in 2014 when her youngest was five. And who knows? Nursing might not be her last career.
I tell you this not because I’m extremely proud of my daughter — although I am — but because Jen’s trajectory is … [read more here]
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Also new on Medium: Parents, You’ve Got It All Wrong: How To Encourage Your Kids to Collaborate (and Step OUT of the Spotlight)
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