I am so very, very sick of people who think writers should work for free. (Like Examiner.com or any of the numerous sites that think professional writers should be thrilled to Get Their Name Out There! Trust me, honey, the thrill of a byline soon fades. But the excitement of a regular paycheck stays with you for a long, long time.)
There are a lot of people who think writing is easy; I know this, because they’re always telling me: “You know, I’ve often thought I’d be a really good writer.” I guess I’ll have to take your word for it, since you’ve never actually written anything, but okay.
I’m good at what I do. If I’m going to write for anyone but myself, I’d like to get paid. It is, after all, my profession.
But the entire online world (*cough* Arianna *cough*) now writes business plans based on FREE content, and they’re proclaimed as media geniuses.
Well, as my dad used to tell us, “You buy shit, you get shit.”
Whenever I can afford it, I support small blogs. After all, their writing inspires, entertains and enlightens me. Many of you have been supporting this blog for a long time, probably for the same reason.
And for the Washington Post to dangle a fake carrot in front of a blogger, expecting them to bite — that’s plain insulting. Shame on them.
As Liz Phair says, “It’s nice to be liked but it’s better by far to get paid.“
Amen Sister. Testify!
They say that money can’t buy happiness. But it can sure take the sting out of being unhappy.
Geez, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone tell me, “I have a really great idea for a book. I just need someone to, you know, write it for me. And publish it. And send me the check.”
That sounds preposterous, but I swear to Maude that, as an editor, I fielded those phone calls a zillion times. I’ve also seen real professionals, experts in their fields, decide to write a book in their field and fail utterly.
Writing is hard. I have a theory on why it’s dismissed as easy, but that’s a topic for a whole article, and as I said, I’m an editor, not a writer. At least I know the difference.
I’m a writer AND an editor. I’ve edited enough of other people’s bad work to know just how bad writing can be. Oddly enough, for many years I simply assumed everyone knew how to write!
Seems like forever since we were e-penpals.
I just like putting words together, don’t much care about getting paid for it – I’d like to, but in the grand scheme of things, it ain’t no big thing. If I put something out there that I think is worthy, and somebody actually reads it, that’s good enough. For example:
I leave to the reader wither coincidence, providence, or ‘shit happens’… [just yesterday], just five days shy of the fortieth anniversary of the day that rocked my world, the day that sent me to War, Dawn and I were in the Only Christian Thrift Store where I fished from the free box a VHS copy of Christopher Walken’s Dogs of War, having as I have had for many years on my bookshelf an original hardcopy of the 1974 novel by Frederick Forsyth. Hmmm…
I know, shameless…
This is ‘Meirka – the majority don’t even know how to read.