Screaming into the void

oh you're here too?

This Ponzi Scheme of Writing

The great writer and humorist, David Rakoff (RIP) used to say, 

Writing is like pulling teeth. From your dick. 

I don't have a dick, but I concur. 

I used to write for newspapers and magazines but it was so long ago I barely remember that the worst part was writing a query letter to an editor somewhere in NYC. The gatekeepers. The ankle biters who were trying to carve out their own voice, the seasoned seniors who encouraged younger talent and the ‘that’s not our demographic’ dismissers. Those who can, write, those who cannot, edit others (and ruin their lives) today it's an algorithm. A lottery of code cracking. How DO I GO VIRAL? Ugh. 

However, magazines were worth the slog, $1/word assignments with paid travel.

Buy the dogs a bag of kibble! One time tip jar here

 

Blogging doesn't have an editor and doesn't have the money. Like writing on a steno pad in a secret closet and tossing it in the fireplace. Most writers want to be heard though, so that becomes a fool's errand. Things seem to change just as I figure out the method. Just as I got the print thing figured out, it all went digital. Then it went to content creation. Now it is careening to AI, which honestly, writes more compelling content than a lot of bloggers. But I find I'm paralyzed by the method and the marketing and not writing the damn stories of which I have hundreds. 

Why?

I took a 10 year break from writing to open a restaurant and then another. A decade and some success selling wine and expensive grass fed meats, I then sold everything and went to the hills of Northern Georgia to start a farm in 2007. For 14 years I  stared at chickens and learned about soil building and permaculture for my entire 40s. I started a little blog because City Chef moves to backwoods rural South to farm stories nearly wrote themselves. I will say that it mostly felt like I was publishing my own copyright infringement invitation in a world of "content creator" thieves. I remember looking at the sources on my data profile and seeing that I was being watched by the Heritage Foundation? A conservative think tank out of Washington DC. Weird. 

For a creative or memoir writer, nothing smothers our fire more than thinking about all the prying eyes who are watching and analyzing or data harvesting our heartfelt musings. Ew. Even just regular subscribers, with the annoying present day habit of likes and comments makes me feel abandoned if they are low and like I'm sitting in my underwear on the train if they're too high. But we play the game and try to "up engagement" so we get noticed. It's gross. Like JLo calling the paparazzi to take photos of her walking down the road in Balenciaga to get coffee in Montauk but then hiding her face and being snarky with photographers. 

Hey! Look at me over here! (Leave me alone!) 

I self published some books in 2012 about the restaurants when some were still calling it vanity publishing because they hadn’t figured out the Ponzi scheme that publishing really is. I worked in that sweat shop in NYC in the 90s as an entry level nobody, but here's the dish—The “advance” is like a payday loan in a ghetto liquor store. Yea, I’ll give you $20,000 and you’ll sell 10,000 books or we’ll break your creative legs by next holiday season. Also I’m going to need you to market this yourself and go on a 40 city book signing tour. Liz Gilbert  isn’t paying for her own flights but um, you will be. That's sales. I hate sales. I cook. I write. I host. I rescue dogs. I can barely collect the 700peso fee for the spay vet at a clinic pop up. Don't make me sell MY books for God's sake. Amazon? If you don't price things right, you could end up OWING money to them at the end of all the fees. 

I guess that's what agents are for but of course, you need to be a high producing writer to get one of those and there we are, full circle back writing notes and tossing them in the trash because we're not Stephen King. I can loop back and talk myself out of 80 things I've already tried and dropped. I'm not growing tomatoes anymore either. Too much work and you could lose an entire garden full of heritage fruit with a couple horned caterpillars overnight. 

I know, I know. So why bother doing anything ya old crank? 

Exactly. 

Is this what late 50s is gonna be? Will I finally open that plumbing business I've always threatened to and leave all this internet bullshit behind? Maybe. It's exhausting. 

I saw someone write on the NOTES section of Sub Slack today that he didn't feel like writing on here was for him. It felt like a chore and the business model of the platform had turned into social media just like everything else and who needs another thing to quit? I agree completely. I'm not interested in going back to tossing my musings in the fireplace but I don't want to yell over the crowd to get noticed either. 

In a world where everything is content to a greedy feed, everyone is a 'creator' and I'm not so sure I'm interested in being a member of that club. I'm in the spin cycle with literally everyone and everything from ladies in Brazil who wash their floors with soap and a broom (why is that so satisfying?) to cat memes to endless political content which has more fights than the actual MMA. 

The internet has us all treading water in a literary junk drawer.