As noted in the headline, there is an internet cottage industry of people getting paid to write online about how to get paid to write online. See websites like The Write Life, Making A Living Writing, and many more if you Google anything along the lines of “professional blogger”. It’s a weird, self-referential phenomenon.
Empowering writers to make more money is obviously something that I support, and I’ve read a million posts about upping your personal ROI. However, I do think these “Unlock your potential!” types of websites deceive readers. Maybe not directly. But here’s the reality, a reality that’s unprofitable to admit: There aren’t that many well-paying writing jobs out there; most people are neither lucky enough nor talented enough to get them.
(I kept this post in drafts for a while, but I realized that I don’t have anything else to add. So… here ya go, world.)
Now that I’m an adult, there are some topics I can’t write about. Not because I don’t have the knowledge, although there are plenty of areas in which I’m ignorant, but because things are too personal. For instance, my public self doesn’t have a sex life, except for a few humorous offhand remarks (or reflections on the past). I don’t write gossip about my friends and acquaintances, as much fun as that would be. Basically, I’m not journaling anymore. Instead, I’m journalisming. Sort of. I’m learning how to report instead of relate. To be clear, “learning” is the operative word.
I used to write about romance, sex, and friendship all the time, back when Tumblr was my primary venue. I also wrote more about mental health than I do now, in part because the primary thing going on in my life was depression and attempts to tackle it. Currently my intellectual pursuits occupy the foreground, whatever I’m reading and thinking about. Work, employment—separate items, unfortunately—marketing, media: these are my main concerns.
It’s an odd feeling. I don’t necessarily want to be the center of my writing anymore, unless that serves the piece (as in this case), but writing is still how I process. Recording emotions and new ideas is how I deal with them. I want to maintain a personal “voice”, to write like a friend, to be candid, to have space for silliness and self-conscious tangents. But I don’t want to expose so much that I’ll be uncomfortable or hurt the people close to me.
Obviously this is a shift still in progress, so who knows if it’ll be permanent or even significant. Self-analysis is faulty, but I can’t help doing it anyway.
PS, the title is obviously (at least I hope it’s obvious) a reference to The Sound of Music:
This post has been sitting around as a draft for more than a month. Whatever.
I’ve decided that I don’t want to be a freelance writer. Even if the effort-to-pay-ratio were better, I still wouldn’t want to freelance. I’m not interested in the kind of writing that brings in freelance money. (What’s lucrative? Business writing of various kinds.)
I want to write to entertain, which means that I’m competing with a million other kids who can turn a phrase. We all want a slice of the limited pie. I have to figure out how to make myself prominent, how to jostle to the front. Consumers must be convinced that my work is valuable.
The original subtitle for this website described me as an “independent writer”. That’s still how I identify. It describes my outlook, both practically and philosophically: I’d rather control the whole process, without catering to anyone else’s strictures.
Obviously I can’t completely do that. For example, I don’t know how to build a website, so mine is made with Blogger. I don’t know how to make printer ink, so I buy it. The list of things that I can’t do entirely by myself is endless. Even when it comes to the simple writing, I need support. One or both of my parents will read each first draft; often Alex does as well.
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