The past… the future?

Today, one of my students asked me what I did for a living. Well, technically, she asked me: “What do you do?”, which is the way we recently learned to ask about someone’s occupation. It struck me as funny because here I am at the front of the class, right? But I knew what she was really asking was: What is my trained profession? What else am I capable of doing? What else do I get paid to do? In essence, she was asking what I did before this. (Keep in mind we haven’t learned the past tense yet.)

I told her I am a journalist, that I’ve written for and edited magazines. She wanted to know how I got there, so I drew arrows on the board and tried to explain the order of what came before teaching…. University, magazine editing, graduate school for creative writing, Chile.

I am still a writer. I hope I am more a writer than ever based on sheer volume of output, which fortunately now amounts to this here blog, guest posts and essays for teaching sites, short stories that I send out as 10-page word documents and get returned as short emails (some of which are personal at least), and I’m also officially writing the “second” draft of a novel.

But am I still a journalist? This is more of a profound question than I realized. I’ve been a working writer for nearly twelve years, publishing work in magazines mostly (see above), but this is the first time I’m not in some capacity earning any money for my writing. It’s either all for free or all for me. I have an iron or two in the fire, so I hope that this will soon change, but for the most part the written word is expected to be consumed for free these days. In the past, I’ve linked to excellent analysis (courtesy of a smart friend) on why exactly this is. We all know the basic reason is that with the fatal wane in print advertising, magazines get smaller and smaller until they disappear altogether or move online, where production costs are closer to nil than ever before so you no longer have to pay writers and photographers healthy fees as you no longer have–or need–the advertising revenue to do so.

I’ve gotten my hands dirty in debates with smart friends about why publishing is moving toward content aggregation rather than well-paid, well-written stories. I have a feeling we as writers messed up a long time ago when we let our content go up on the Internet for free. I remember paying for an annual subscription to Salon.com in 2002/03, but that wasn’t the norm. I realize we can’t limit the Internet. It’s beautiful, truly beautiful, that people the world over have free access to information, books, and technology. At the same time, a certain contemporary entrepreneur can pocket upwards of $350 million off the content of writers who haven’t seen a penny. That, to me, is not beautiful.

I’ll admit my paper-loving heart sunk a little when I recently watched this piece of brilliantness about a toddler’s impression of a magazine being a broken iPad. Then again, one friend said purchasing the iPad has meant he reads more than ever AND he pays for it. So maybe the same technology that virtually ended the advertising revenue model for magazines and the classifieds for newspapers is also turning things around. Maybe.

Another friend said how the writer must now embody a “circular reference,” wherein they must come to the table with a functioning website and an online following, a gaggle of unique visitors, tweets galore, AND street cred. So, you wrote something beautiful, good for you. Fewer and fewer publishers will take a risk on you unless you come with a built-in audience. That’s why so many passionate scribes are throwing up their hands and making it easier and easier for Amazon to cut out the middle men and women like agents and editors and publishing houses. (I know any of us either worried or excited about this saw this piece all about it.)

I also talked to a former employer who has seen a massive sea change at the very top of the game, with seasoned editors and designers taking their talent out of publishing altogether to go in-house at design firms or archives. That’s great for the photo editors, but what do us writers do?!

Ocean Beach, SF. A writer’s hood for sure.

The answer? Keep writing. I suppose it’s time to stop whining about how hard it is for the independent writer to make a buck. The ocean is not pulling this wave back. I’m going to retire the soap box, but I’m not necessarily going to like it. I mean, I can spend a good 1-2 weeks writing and re-writing a travel piece on say, Mendoza. I can spend another week’s worth of 1-2 hour chunks researching online outlets that might be interested, drafting cover letters, and sending off email pitches. Then if an editor no doubt much younger than I am likes what I have to say, he/she might pay me $25. Yep, $25 bones for close to a month of work. Sure, it’s spread out, and if you have all the time in the world, you could build up an impressive “rolodex” (oh, what a dated word… more on that another day). But who has all the time in the world when hardly anyone is paying?! I may as well just throw it on the blog. Eek, might have tip-toed back onto that soap box.

I know writers, like most artists, have always had to work hard and pay their dues until they made it. But I’m not an intern anymore. I’m not desperate for clips though I may be desperate for a decent word rate. Still, I’ve published for free in Chile because I’ve needed new connections (and have made great ones) and have been able to diversify my material so that I now also write about teaching and education. Making a new in professionally, promoting my blog, and reaching a new batch of readers on Twitter all make it worth my while as I build the base I’ll need when it is time to query literary agents. That and that alone is why I’ve decided to write thousands of words for free. Though I still shake my head at how often I’ve heard “We can’t pay you, but…” I mean would you ever say this to your plumber or roofer or mailman or dentist or department store clerk?

My fear is that nowadays when “everyone” is a writer or photographer or blogger or tumblr or tweeter or content pusher, no one has to vet the process anymore. I’m a girl who likes to play by the rules. I want to finish my novel and query agents and then find an editor and then revise and then publish. The whole writing part aside, the official publishing process can take up to a year or longer all on its own. I know everyone may not have that patience, not to mention the stomach for all the rejection that comes along the way. But it’s this process that convinces me a book is worthy when I pay for it. Perhaps it’s also what I need to convince me my own book is worthy. Nothing against self-publishers out there as I know you are fierce and you are many and mainstream success has come your way because you had the chutzpah to put your book on the Internet. But when 90% of that process is striped away, isn’t there now an exceptionally low barrier to entry? Who vets now?

I have a feeling the answer is you and I do. The people online. The people with eReaders who scroll what a math equation has recommended for them based on their past searches and purchases. Some of those recommendations may very well be books by new self-published authors who wouldn’t get read otherwise. Bravo to that.

The Novel.

In the meantime, I’ll be here, writing for me and hopefully not always for free. I am, as Orhan Pamuk wrote, “imposing on myself the discipline of working on a table all day, enjoying the smell of paper and pen in a lonely room–habits that I will never lose.” (The Paris Review Interviews, Volume II.)