Is Anyone Just About the Writing Anymore?

Growing up, my dad used to warn me that if I wanted to be a writer, I better be prepared to be broke. That the life of a writer requires a lifetime of eating Ramen noodles and smoking cigarettes, and if I had any other life plans that required money, I would need to put them on hold. Probably indefinitely. I took his advice to heart and went into business, but I never let the dream of being a writer die. Instead, I worked at some lesser interests, hoping that someday I could create a life that would allow me to take my writing dreams back off the shelf.

My First Foray

After spending many years in the corporate world, and then running my own business, I finally got a chance to do some writing for an online legal journal. I was so excited. My first writing gig! I had never been so thrilled to make so little money. In the beginning I made $75 per article, and when things were really cooking, I raked in $100 per spot. Whoa baby! I wasn’t writing about things I really cared about, but I was writing, and that was enough. For a few weeks anyway. Soon the amount of time it took to go back and forth with the editors, bastardizing the English language for internet consumption, was too much, and I fell out of love with the process. This wasn’t the kind of writing for me.

Second Take

It took a few years to come back to it, but eventually I realized that the only kind of writing I wanted to pursue was the kind where I wrote what I wanted to talk about, when I wanted to talk about it. And so, for the last two years, I’ve been moonlighting as a writer. I finished my first book a few months ago and am now dipping my toes into the blogosphere. So far, I’ve made a grand total of $0.00—and have been loving every minute of it! It turns out, the only kind of writing I find rewarding is the kind that doesn’t reward me with any money at all! Thank goodness my dad warned me all those years ago, or I’d probably be camped out on a beach in Santa Cruz by now.

So great, I’ve been writing. What am I going to do with it? I’ve sent my book to a bunch of agents, gotten some good feedback, but have been told that my book has a few significant knocks against it. Knock one, I’m a new writer. Nobody’s heard of me. Knock two, I have no platform. My lack of social media presence is glaring. Knock three, since my book is about a guy tackling middle age in the 4000-footers of New Hampshire, agents believe it will mostly appeal to men, and since men don’t buy books anymore, agents aren’t willing to risk it. By the way, did you know that 85% of books are bought by women? Literature for guys is apparently limited to the power rankings on ESPN.   

So, What to Do?

Armed with this newfound knowledge, I turned to Google to figure out what the hell a platform is. What I learned was a bunch of questions that I couldn’t answer in the affirmative. Are you famous? No. Are you known for anything? No. Do you have a blog? No. Are you on Twitter? No. Facebook? Not in years. Reddit? What’s Reddit? Instagram? No, wait, yes! Yes, I love pictures! Ok, so I’m into pictures. One time I even got 200 likes on a picture! Does that count as a platform? No. Oh man, I don’t have a platform.

The more I looked into it, the more I learned that being a “writer” requires a lot more than writing. I’ve had to set up a website and figure out how to embed plugins. I’ve had to draft query letters to agents, which are essentially business proposals to explain why your book is worth publishing. I’ve had to resurface on social media and try to make sense of my Twitter feed. I even created a Facebook page and got myself a profile on Medium. Reddit rules are still beyond me though. I’ve had several posts blocked because I don’t have enough good “karma” yet.

The Push and Pull of It

Figuring all of this stuff out takes time. Time away from writing. Heck, putting together one agent query can take a couple of hours, if you’re really trying to make it look good. Maybe all this time hunting down agents isn’t worth it? What’s the endgame here? Is it to write, or to get paid to write? If agents aren’t going to sign me until I have a platform, maybe I should just self-publish so I can move onto the next book. Hmm, the next book.

I’m at a crossroads now: keep searching for an agent or go it alone? Writing seems to be a self-promotion game these days, your efforts focused on gobbling up enough followers on social media so that you can prove to agents your book can sell. Is that what I want? Is that what I care about? Or do I just want to produce, and do so on a site devoid of ads and slideshows that maximize my click-through rate? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a site that’s just about the writing? No gimmicks. No ads. Just a place where I can say what I want to say, and maybe someday, if I produce enough, the agents will come looking for me. That would be nice.

Learning to Become a Writer

As I develop my writing, I’m trying to share a little bit of what goes on behind the scenes. If you enjoyed this and want to read more about the writing process, you can check out other posts here. And if you are working on something and want to share your process or what you’ve learned, I’d love to hear it. One can never learn enough, and the literary world is changing as fast as everything else.