I just want to write something worth reading…
As I gaze, slack-jawed, at the bottomless abyss that is the online writing scene, I find myself frustrated. This is not merely due to the avalanche of content out there and the feeling that any attempt to stand out is as laughable as lighting a a match in a hurricane, no, I’m frustrated because I get the overwhelming sense that to succeed as an online writer (i.e., to be read and liked enough to make this my income), sooner or later, I must sell my soul.
Eventually, I’ll have to cave and start writing listicles and how-to’s and click-bait and lifeless, SEO-optimized dreck. I’ll have to submit to the matrix, bow the knee to the money-machine, and accept my token payout and be grateful.
And that’s frustrating. Because I have no plans to do any of that.
I’m a pretty stubborn son of a gun, and if I can’t succeed doing what I want to do, writing what I want to write, then I guess I just won’t succeed. And I’m fully cognizant that that might just be nuts, short-sighted, pointless, arrogant, even dumb.
But to be nakedly frank, I don’t care. I don’t want to die before I’m dead, and taking this muse and enslaving her to the gods of marketing or popularity or fill-in-the-blank is murder, in my mind. No, thank you. I don’t kill muses.
And I hate, I hate all the advice I read from certain platforms about how to “build your audience” and “adapt to trends,” as if I should make decisions about what to write based on what people might like or “are looking for.” Pardon me for saying so, but that’s garbage, and so is a lot of the content that comes out of that way of thinking.
Great writing — great writing — is not done with one’s finger in the wind. It’s a last stand. It’s Thermopylae, the Alamo, and The Charge of the Light Brigade rolled up in a big, raw, bloody hash. You cannot decide what to write based on what’s popular and expect it to be anything more than a flash in the pan, and I’m not interested in making disposable drivel, no matter how well it pays.
Now, I’m not saying that what you write, fellow scribe, is drivel. This is all coming from a feeling I get, remember? I’m pointing the finger at the machine, not anyone else slinging words out there. But this feeling I’m working from here is overpowering, and I have a burning suspicion that you can relate.
I put it to you: what’s better? Earning money writing whatever it takes to earn money, or writing what is in you and making it sing and to hell with the paycheck? And while you shouldn’t have to choose between those options, most of us will have to.
So, as much blowback as I imagine this might bring me, I have to say it: don’t write what you think will succeed. Write what only you can write. Do something else to get the money you need for food, but dear God, don’t sacrifice the sacred fire just to fill your belly. Don’t do it. It’ll kill you, like a creeping drought. One day, you’ll wake up and realize you’re nothing but a husk. And I don’t wish that fate for anyone.
Reading that all back… Maybe it means that I’m not cut out for this platform, and I hope y’all will let me know if that’s right, because time is precious and short. Like so many of you, this is one part of a larger hustle, but even as I use that word, I wanna be clear: I don’t think of anything I do as a quick, slap-dash, get-it-out-there-and-get-it-monetized, mass-produced anything. I care deeply about every word I put down. And I can’t — and I mean that literally — write “what it takes” to succeed.
I can only write what I must write.
And I know I’m not the only one.
