Why Are You Churning Out All This Writing Now???

I always enjoyed writing at school and English was one of my best subjects, yet I went into STEM, originally studying for BSc Chemistry, because I liked science and found that easier than Physics (Maths a bugbear, as it is for many, turned out that was a factor in my not going down the Chemistry route also, instead I accumulated enough Credits for a BSc General Science, sort of portfolio degree).

In my 30s, I started taking a few evening classes in things I had enjoyed as a kid and wanted to revisit, like Drawing and Writing, or things I wanted to learn as an adult, French. I attended a ‘Writing for a Living Course’ in 2010 at the then Glasgow College of Building and Printing and really enjoyed it too. The course was delivered by a seasoned journalist who had written many articles for different publications in all styles, and she reckoned I’d be capable of that if I worked at it.

Of course, it has always been very hard to make any money as a writer, especially with the voracious appetite of the internet for content. So much of it is poor quality, no longer copy-edited and just churned out, errors and all, and now it’s feeding into AI models to churn out even worse copy, like an old school second of third generation video tape copy, as a friend cleverly put it.

So, if I ever had any expectations of making coin from writing, those are even more amorphous now. It’s just something creative I like to do, and have always liked to do, like drawing, which was an hours consuming, daily habit of mine into my teens, which then got dropped, like reading 2000 A.D. comic and playing around with my ‘not quite Grade 1' keyboard skills on synths.

After moving to France, I realised there were a few friends and acquaintances who were curious as to the reality of being a an immigrant Scots Glasgow couple, with little French language skills, newly arrived in France, so I started a blog on that, which saw me develop some degree of regular, longer than a social post writing:

https://bobthomson70.substack.com

There is though a particularly odd, health related reason for my burst of activity recently, which is well documented in that above blog, and may not last. So, if you enjoy reading my wafflings, their frequency may diminish rapidly over the next month or so, or maybe not, on verra as it is in French: we shall see. I’ll do my best to maintain at least a weekly cadence and am furiously noting down ideas whilst my mind is most active as it is now.

As I’ve progressed into my late stage professional career in freelance contract IT work, I’ve come across others with such side creative interests, especially music and photography. Sadly, also way too many who don’t seem to have any hobbies at all, and who continue their work outside working hours, at best applying it to their own projects and work related learning.

Of course, any of those choices are not even open to many who have to hold down multiple jobs just to have shelter and food, such is the nature of our world of unevenly distributed privilege, often by accident of birth.

However, if you are lucky enough to have some spare time, even an hour or two a week, why not have a think about what you might enjoy as a creative outlet?

In a world of distractions, with its firehose of content trained on you 24x7, why not produce some as a wee change from consuming it, and scratch a creative itch of your own? Your brain might thank you for it later too.