Seventeen cents

building wealth as a writer

Writing stories on the internet is weird.

If you’re reading this you may already know that. I used to write for newspapers and magazines and it was so long ago I barely remember 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, the ‘that’s not our demographic’ dismissers. I remember them all. Vaguely. But I also remember $1/word assignments.

I took a 10 year break from writing to open a restaurant and then another. After a decade and some success I sold everything and went to the hills to start a farm and be a fairly huge failure. It was fun, both sides. Mostly. (wine selling makes more money than words)

I self published some books in 2012 when posers were still calling it Vanity Publishing because they hadn’t figured out the Ponzi scheme that publishing really is. The “advance” is like a payday loan in a ghetto liquor and off track betting bodega. 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. David Sedaris isn’t paying for his own flights but um, you will be. It depends how badly you wanted it. I didn’t. Hate promotion, hate marketing, hate live readings. Hate being forced to do meet and greets. Didn’t like it as a chef, less liking it as a book pusher. I can’t imagine the anxiety that comes with being a stand up comic, tho I do like to tell some dumb ass stories.

When I bought my first “lease” to put my little cafe in 1990s Atlanta, I got the opportunity from a guy who made all his money selling a “business” crazy cheap to unsuspecting wanna bes. There were the Korean ladies who made tuna fish sandwiches and other “American plates” with yellow melted cheese on top. They lasted 6 months. Another young couple with an Irish pub idea and a drinking problem. A lesbian disco that sold vodka only and had billiards in back. Both lasted a year. His hook was that he’d let the new “restaurateurs” off the hook when they missed a couple rent payments and they’d skip out and he’d resell the “business”. It was easier than running a restaurant which is what he did for the first 10 years of having that place. Work smart not hard, he always said.

In a page right out of The Producers playbook, he made sure that it was someone with a fairly goofy idea and a fair amount of hubris. No experience. Just enough cash to put a down payment and take over rent payments. I think he sold my space 8 times over the years. My chicken salad sandwich business and “really good banana bread” idea surely would sink me. I was a 29 year old with lots of service experience but not even so much as one cooking class under my belt who was going to launch a fancy wine bar with ambitious appetizers and Riedel stemware in this former front office of a car dealership from the 50s that had most recently been a string of horrible restaurants. You couldn’t tell me it wouldn’t work.

I got my ass handed to me quite a few nights when actual throngs of people showed up and we all found out that I could cook for like, FOUR, comfortably. But I got up to speed fast. I asked for help, I hired people with experience, I listened to customer feedback (raise prices for lunch, go LUXE for dinner, you’re no good at “value” menus. Don’t even try.) I stayed in the space 20 hours a day. I gave out free samples. I walked around town with an apron and my beret and passed out menus. I made a smaller menu and made sure I knew what I was cooking before I thought I had any business making 48 of something. I saw what held and made money (soup, dessert, wine) and saw what was a bigger risk (fresh fish and meats cooked to temperature) but I was not going down with the ship. I gave little bowls of olive and toasty garlic breads when people sat down and made the space look like a fever dream out of Casablanca. Dimmer switches, candles, good looking hip servers, Thievery Corporation lounge tunes and good speakers. Cushy seats and sexy lighting. If nothing else, people looked good and felt good inside until I could give myself a crash course in survival cooking for beginner self taught chefs.

I made it past a year, then two, then added liquor and added a party room…then after 5 years the guy who sold it to me for $10,000 and a handshake tripled my rent and moved to the Keys on his sailboat. I had opened a busier tequila fueled Mexican venture nearby that hit with mass appeal and I sold that after three years. Not my kind of thing but it did make a shit load of money. The crowds, the drunks, the noise, the huge staff. Pass. I was deep in restaurant land for ten years. It’s how I imagine a long running Broadway play. Sort of the same performance every night then finally, you decide you can’t play Mrs. Bumblesnatch with pluck anymore and final curtain.

I went to farm of course, like so many food business people do. I think it’s God’s way of bringing you back down to earth after all the demands you put on your produce and protein vendors over the years. You call those microgreens fresh!? It’s the hardest work for the least money. Growing beautiful foods is a labor of love in the truest sense and every single plate you sit down to that someone else grew and/or cooked should be $100. But that’s another story.

I blew through all my money renovating a big dumb house and raising fancy chickens but I loved every second of it. When that had worn out its welcome I hung up my overalls and went on a vanlife RV adventure and of course went to Mexico. It all seems so predictable. The getting broadsided and flipping in my van I hadn’t planned for but here we are. The stories sure are available in this pueblo and it almost seems too obvious to write about most days. The characters in this remote town on a forgotten part of the Sea of Cortez and me living with dozens if not hundreds of feral dogs and wearing the same flip flops I showed up in years ago is not always “fun” but it’s illuminating. Is that the word? Probably not. If I had an ankle biting editor he could tell me the word.

So once again I have no idea what I’m doing.

I have had a blog over the years since 2009 and I never really figured out how to make that worthwhile, but I suppose it all comes back to advertising doesn’t it. Travel and Leisure or the Blogger tag. Same same. But life happens and sometimes (and because of) social media fills that waning need to tell your side of the story.

I got a message from Substack that $4.02 was on the way and Medium said my last essay grabbed enough attention to make $.17. The good news is I didn’t have to pitch the idea to some ankle biting editor, so my dignity is intact. I just sit down and write what’s on my bee in a jar brain and push publish and hope that 10, 20, 300 people see it? Enjoy it? Get a laugh? I’m at a riper age now that I don’t really care.

La Fruta Madura (what they call menopausal women in Mexico…the ripe fruit) would like to get paid for her stories but I get more joy hiding eggs in fields for street dogs and getting that black brindle baby dog to come out from under the gate around the corner. External validation needs change and if you’re willing to live a few notches below what you thought you deserved, you can afford to crawl under fences to reach a puppy. All the same though, writers like an audience. So I’m glad I’ve got a place to put my stories. Thanks for reading.

More info at linktr.ee/lolasdogrescue