a writer's life?
Oct. 8th, 2007 01:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonI'll start this off with a plug, that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
morrigandaughtr and I will be teaching our writing/storytelling workshop (Speaking With True Tongues: a weekend workshop of Sacred Storytelling) in New Hampshire Friday-Monday of Martin Luther King Jr weekend -- Jan 18-21). More info later, but now onto your regularly-scheduled programming...
RU Sirius, one of the very first Internet-age counterculture savants, asked 10 well-respected, mostly counter-cultural, professional writers whether the 'Net is good for writers or not. Simple, but deep question, and some of the answers are fascinating. I can personally echo one of the observations, that as a freelance analyst/journalist/writer, the going has gotten tougher and tougher the last several years, with word count and rates for most pieces going steadily down, and less and less print media outlets (which typically pay real money, as opposed to many Internet-only pubs) available, and those that are still around are typically cutting back. As the Web 2.0 world encourages everyone to "add content" (in the form of comments, blogs, LJ, forums, and so on), there are seemingly less venues willing to pay writers a living wage to produce professional work.
I was lucky enough to be in a relatively high-demand writing niche, but I know that even there, the clear downward economic trend was one of the factors that entered my mind and personal calculus in deciding to go back to working for someone else instead of full-time freelance writing last April. I can (and do) still freelance from time to time, but it's not what I'm completely depending upon to live any more, which is something of a big relief, but is also disappointing as well. Writing because you want to is great, but there's also something to be said for the effect of the external discipline of necessity. Writing because you need to eat is a powerful motivation to hone your craft, and to get those words out of your head and onto the page.
Does this mean writing as a career, writing as a profession is doomed? My own thought is no, thank goodness, but it's transforming -- some of the changes are good, some bad, and most...well, too early to tell. Now, everyone can write, and everyone can be a writer, but as always, not everyone is a writer (as Sirius relates as an anecdotal meeting between William Burroughs and Samuel Becket). Can writing become, to use the economic term, commoditized? In other words, will there continue to be any actual value (in economic terms, something people will actually pay for) in good, clear, insightful, well-written prose? I sure hope so. There's a lot to be said for encouraging writers (as with any other form of art) to spend many hours honing their skills and abilities, in order to have the outcome be innovative, high-quality art. There's nothing wrong with dabbling or writing as a hobby (which is where I now find myself), but dabblers typically don't get to spend all day, every day, doing their art, and like so many other things in life, much of the probability of success in the creation of anything (relationships, financial health, art, and so on) is much about putting in the time.
Warm hearth,
--Chelidon
Is The Net Good For Writers?
RU Sirius
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/10/05/is-the-net-good-for-writers/
morrigandaughtr and I will be teaching our writing/storytelling workshop (Speaking With True Tongues: a weekend workshop of Sacred Storytelling) in New Hampshire Friday-Monday of Martin Luther King Jr weekend -- Jan 18-21). More info later, but now onto your regularly-scheduled programming...RU Sirius, one of the very first Internet-age counterculture savants, asked 10 well-respected, mostly counter-cultural, professional writers whether the 'Net is good for writers or not. Simple, but deep question, and some of the answers are fascinating. I can personally echo one of the observations, that as a freelance analyst/journalist/writer, the going has gotten tougher and tougher the last several years, with word count and rates for most pieces going steadily down, and less and less print media outlets (which typically pay real money, as opposed to many Internet-only pubs) available, and those that are still around are typically cutting back. As the Web 2.0 world encourages everyone to "add content" (in the form of comments, blogs, LJ, forums, and so on), there are seemingly less venues willing to pay writers a living wage to produce professional work.
I was lucky enough to be in a relatively high-demand writing niche, but I know that even there, the clear downward economic trend was one of the factors that entered my mind and personal calculus in deciding to go back to working for someone else instead of full-time freelance writing last April. I can (and do) still freelance from time to time, but it's not what I'm completely depending upon to live any more, which is something of a big relief, but is also disappointing as well. Writing because you want to is great, but there's also something to be said for the effect of the external discipline of necessity. Writing because you need to eat is a powerful motivation to hone your craft, and to get those words out of your head and onto the page.
Does this mean writing as a career, writing as a profession is doomed? My own thought is no, thank goodness, but it's transforming -- some of the changes are good, some bad, and most...well, too early to tell. Now, everyone can write, and everyone can be a writer, but as always, not everyone is a writer (as Sirius relates as an anecdotal meeting between William Burroughs and Samuel Becket). Can writing become, to use the economic term, commoditized? In other words, will there continue to be any actual value (in economic terms, something people will actually pay for) in good, clear, insightful, well-written prose? I sure hope so. There's a lot to be said for encouraging writers (as with any other form of art) to spend many hours honing their skills and abilities, in order to have the outcome be innovative, high-quality art. There's nothing wrong with dabbling or writing as a hobby (which is where I now find myself), but dabblers typically don't get to spend all day, every day, doing their art, and like so many other things in life, much of the probability of success in the creation of anything (relationships, financial health, art, and so on) is much about putting in the time.
Warm hearth,
--Chelidon
Is The Net Good For Writers?
RU Sirius
http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/10/05/is-the-net-good-for-writers/
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 05:28 pm (UTC)yay! bounce bounce...starting to save up...
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Date: 2007-10-10 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-10 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-08 07:27 pm (UTC)Don't have time to read the article right now, but since I am finally making all my income from blogging I'm probably not a god case study.
BTW, my boss Steve knows you(http://ww.patronsaintpr.com http//www.authorviews.com) from your days at Network Computing. He used to work at Loompanics.
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Date: 2007-10-10 02:11 am (UTC)I think it's great that you're making a living at blogging -- one of the few, the proud. Who knows, perhaps I'll go back to it at some point. I still have some offers, but right now it's just not stable enough, especially in the biz I was in, nobody can figure out how to make money at it, or at least enough to support a healthy full ecosystem of writers and editors. Even Network Computing, after an amazing long run, got the plug pulled in the end, at least for the print journal, and that was one of the flagships. Ah, well, times change, everything goes in cycles. May you always be on top of yours!
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Date: 2007-10-10 03:14 am (UTC)Working for Steve is a kick, we realte to each other really well for the most part.
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Date: 2007-10-10 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-12 04:42 pm (UTC)