Writing for Bloggers: Introductory Course

[substitute]

People like this guy who tried to get paid for blogging give me the ennui. Blogging is writing done by postliterate geeks. These people are used to being paid for their hobbies, because an obsession with computer programming or its equivalent often accidentally results in a nice paycheck. This will not happen with your blog. Since none of you have met a writer before or read an entire book, some review is going to be necessary here. Writing is not like computer programming. Here are some things about writing:

• People write because they have to and get paid if and when they can. Writers do not expect to make a living by writing and very few of them get paid more than lunch money. This is true for bad, mediocre, and even very good writers.
  
  
• Writing is done for an audience. If you write entirely for yourself, and do not stop to consider your readers and what they may find interesting or pleasant, do not be surprised if you are not read.
  
  
• "Content" is not generic. If you do not have anything to say, do not write. If you have something to say that is said frequently by others, you will not be read. A new person writing "My occasional rants on the world of PC Gaming with particular emphasis on multiplayer online games" or "A daily set of links to Slashdot and three or four well-known political websites with my unique and irreverent perspective" will not be noticed, much less read.
  
  
• Writing is harder than talking. It is, in fact, a craft. (See Podcasting, below). The only people who are read by many others are people who take care to put words together properly, and these people usually have to go over their writing several times and edit it for repetition, clichés, dumb catchphrases, and ugly turns of phrase. If you are not willing to do this you will not be read.
  
  
• Podcasting is not writing. Podcasting is talking into a microphone and then having people listen. If you are not a speaker of professional quality you will sound like a complete fucking tool on your podcast. The number of people willing to listen to a mouth-breathing, sniffling amateur drone about technology or politics is small. For example, it's smaller than the number of people who are willing to listen to the BBC or National Public Radio. Much smaller. Do not podcast.
  
  
• Even if you have exciting things to say, even if you write with careful attention to your audience, even if you spend years improving your skills, you will not get paid. If you build a better mousetrap, it's said the world will beat a path to your door. If you write a better paragraph, you then have to beat a path to your job.

If you stripped out all the personal yawps, pictures, and linksmanship from my own blog and then pulled out the bits that could have theoretically been sold to a newspaper or magazine as reviews or op ed, and then assumed that I sold them all and got paid for them all, I'd make maybe $250-$300 a month unless I'd really hit the bigtime. And you would have made an ass out of U and me in the process, because not even very good writers sell all their stuff.

I hope this is helpful. If you still want to write things on the internet despite never being paid and rarely being read, you are a writer. If you work very hard at it, someday you may get $15,000 for two or three years' work and be distributed in tiny quantities to libraries and bookstores. It will be the happiest day of your life.

I mean it about podcasting, though. Don't do it.

Comments

Re: oh shit

[substitute.livejournal.com]

I still can't find your point. Orwell made judgment errors. What does that have to do with why or why not he shouldn't have been a good writer? Eco's writing is "informed by a wider life"; what writer doesn't have a wider life?

And what do either of those things say about my point, which is that writing is both difficult and not remunerative? And that writing is harder than talking, and isn't necessarily done well by everyone who is good at something else?

There is no dichotomy between being a writer and doing other things, nor is there some exalted status of writerdom. It is a craft and for some a calling. What someone does for money may or may not require writing as a skill.

There's a joke about an old bluesman who won the state lottery. On being asked what he would do with the money, he said "I'm just fixin' to play the blues until I'm poor again." Almost anyone who has the writing bug would love to do it full-time. Only those who are both talented and fortunate get that chance.

Re: oh shit

[kehoea.livejournal.com]

Okay, so your disgust is with the "geeks" in particular, and if someone from another field manages to make money from writing without living on noodles for years, you're be fine with that. Excuse my pre-emptively positive interpretation that it wasn't my field in particular that you hate.

Re: oh shit

[substitute.livejournal.com]

I am not sure where you got the idea that I didn't want someone to make money writing, or to enjoy writing, or to be good at it. What I said was that writing is craft and that experience and talent matter, and that payment for writing is rare and unexpected.

I frequently hear geeks complain that their bosses undervalue computer programming as a craft and consider any technical task that's beyond their understanding to be easy and quick. They have a good point. The same thing is true for writing.

One difference is that being a good writer rather than a good carpenter or vascular surgeon or embedded systems programmer will not in itself bring in money.

Being able to write well on a blog or elsewhere is a joy and an accomplishment. As I said in my original post, rather than this side thread, it's neither something everyone should expect to excel at naturally or something for which one should expect to be paid.

I honestly think you're disagreeing with something I never even said!

Re: oh shit

[kehoea.livejournal.com]

Flipzagging said, (http://substitute.livejournal.com/953725.html?thread=4041085#t4041085) of you:

But also, I don't see the reason for all the outrage. You're policing the title of 'writer', denying it to people who aren't professional, or who haven't suffered greatly for their art.

And your answer left Flipzagging, and everyone else reading, with exactly that understanding. So, yes, in point of technicality, I'm disagreeing with something you never said. But this is conversation, not monologue, if someone says something of you that's wrong, speak up.

Re: oh shit

[substitute.livejournal.com]

And your answer left Flipzagging, and everyone else reading, with exactly that understanding.

Well, no. It left you with that understanding, which I have tried and failed to correct. I hope you'll allow Neil and the other 7 billion people on the planet their own interpretations.

I don't think we're getting any closer to a mutual understanding here. Probably best to drop it.

Mazel tov!