Unfortunately for the writer, the Big Four rewards certain qualities. Connections, a social media following, a trending identity, youth and beauty, an elite address. That's it. That will get you face time. If writers see themselves as entrepreneurs, can we blame them?
I don't blame writers, Richard. I'm referring to a mindset pushed by business interests, including the Big Four publishers, and conveyed by business self-help jargon (e.g., "empower yourself" with a "platform" and a "brand identity"). Individual authors make their peace with this depending on their writing goals. There's the reality of being a working writer and accepting the tradeoffs. Then there's drinking the KoolAid. For me, the turning point came when I realized all the social-media hustling and talk about entrepreneurialism was draining the life out of the writing I care about most.
Writing always comes back to thinking— working out our internal world as it intersects with external, and the synthesis of that. AI doesn’t take away the need for that basic function in writers any more than religion does. As I wonder about my place in writing as it intersects with the need to show my thinking on social media platforms, I come to the place of immediacy: What the human animal encounters and processes. I use the platforms but they aren’t my life, they aren’t the art, although they are intertwined. We have to keep thinking and talking about what we experience now more than ever, our minds like tiny candle lights in dense and noisy fog.
This is beautifully put , and I couldn't agree with you more — about immediacy, about conveying our experience in the moment, about synthesizing what we experience in the world with our inner life. "Our minds like tiny candle lights" — oh, yes.
Thanks for this insight Martha. It is far too easy to get caught up in the business side of this thing and forget why we started writing in the first place. I appreciate the reminder. All the best, Matthew
I would call it a necessary practice, making sure that the business pressure on a platform like Substack doesn't undercut real creative energy. But it's also good to build a community here, as you're doing so well, Matthew, and that community also feeds the writing and reading soul. It's a balance, as with so many things in life. I'm just wary of explicit entrepreneur talk because it's so omnipresent and seductive, if we're not careful. We don't own these digital platforms, after all. But as of yet, they can't own me :-)
This article sparked so many insights and strong feelings. As a "recovered entrepreneur" (I thought being one was my only chance to be financially stable so I could be free to go back to writing), I can confirm that the skills and rationalizations necessary to operate a startup and get it funded or sold are incompatible to life. It calls for numbness and a practice of ignoring cues from the body and mind. It calls for reduction: classifying everything and everyone in a category, boiling things down to data points, and massaging (aka manipulating) context to keep up an appearance long enough to exchange this for big money.
Being an artist, writer, musician, etc. is not only incompatible with the requirements of entrepreneurship as it has evolved today, it also challenges and threatens the narrative that upholds its reductive and exploitative nature.
It's true, though, that it takes time and some life experience to be able to tell apart the false messages from the truth, and to realize all along that your art doesn't depend on whether it will sell or not because it's non-transactional by nature. While we cannot divest from the fact that we need money to survive and thrive enough so we can continue as artists, we also should stop expecting or trying to mold our creative practice into a business venture.
There is no cut-and-dried solution to this quandary, especially for those of us who need to work. One of the ways that worked for me was to work in a writing-adjacent field: editing. This frees me up to write on my own terms and not have to turn my writing into a business.
Going on a tangent here: When I first came to the US in 1999, I applied to bursaries and other private benefactors--there were so many choices to fund writers to pursue their own projects. When I searched for these again two years ago, I was dismayed that most of them had become organizations that demanded so much and had so many hurdles for applicants. They all claim to be committed to equity and social justice, but their process reminded me very much of the process for selling a company to VCs. Private bursaries and individual benefactors were how legendary artists in history have created their masterpieces. We need more of this kind of funding for writers and artists again.
Neva, this deserves a post of its own! (Consider publishing it on TW.) You and I are very much in tune. One of the difficult personal ironies for me and you, I think, is that we're good at organizing. We can be and have been entrepreneurial, and made some headway doing so. It's just so darn hard not to be taken in by the excitement and buzz. At times, it's almost felt like I've been fighting against myself — but I've come to realize the fight is worth it. I'm also more comfortable than ever with cognitive dissonance :-)
When I was freelancing for a living, I opted to do editing for most of my income, because, as you say, at least it's adjacent to writing. But I also wanted to keep writing, taking on journalism gigs and starting TW, which meant I was just overall too busy. There are lots of ways to be creative, however, at different phases in our lives. To be continued....
So true!! I feel this every time I wrote a grant application. Trying to sell myself as a worthy candidate. And the competition is fierce. Which is also unhealthy Bea cause it puts us artist in competition with each other, instead of encouraging collaboration. Argh.
I wrote a comment and then accidentally closed the window.. Typical.
Anyways, I agree, Martha. I've always hated the entrepreneur and marketing side of authorship. Back in my naive days, I had the Van Gogh mindset of doing art for the love of art, but I remembered him sleeping in haystacks and starving a lot of the time. It's a delicate balance to survive, play the game, while not selling our souls.
As for the AI quandary, you bring up exactly why it fails in the human arena (among the concerns you've previously brought up). There's no room for nuance.
I think the balance part is key, Tiffany. As I commented to @matthewmlong, I think the community-building aspects of a stack like yours pay off in all sorts of ways — financially, yes, but also the connections with other writers can really spark inspiration and help with thinking through ideas. I know that's the case for me, which is why I like commenting and reflecting on what other writers say. That conversation is not simply about professional networking. It can be inspiriting, and for that reason, the business drumbeat we hear everyday on this platform and across the culture in general needs to be countered. Bringing creativity to all aspects of our lives is never a simple binary: e.g., art vs. commerce. We can live artfully and still make money or do our work regardless. The main thing I regret now is the need for constant vigilance against the digital powers that be.
I spent 20 years being overtly hostile to marketing and business thinking, intentionally acting against that mindset artistically, and then over the past few years have gone on a long run of reading marketing and business books. And I can say with confidence that I still hate it as much as I did on day one.
The only way that I can think to integrate it into practice is to make the art first without thinking about any of that, and then figure out how to find the people that might be into it. But I'm also working on the assumption that conventional thinking about what can gain an audience are generally more narrow than what's actually possible. I mean, if Merzbow can find an audience by doing blistering noise music, there should be people out there who are into just about anything.
Connecting with those people amongst the competing clamor is always the challenge, and it's important to remember that popularity doesn't translate into money. I'm really trying to figure out ways of doing this that feel authentic, and it's tough to do that sometimes because of how much I hate the hustle aspect. And I should point out that I still haven't figured out how to profit from art.
Also, your original essay is from the same issue to which I submitted a Weird Music excerpt, introducing us for the first time. And I'm now in a similar place to where you were in 2010. I have an unstarted Substack post title "The Slow Turn" sitting in my drafts about this particular transition for me, which has been a progression throughout my adult life. I'll probably return to this comment to mine for nuggets!
I hope you do mine some nuggets from this comment, John. I think there will always be a negotiation for creative artists between following an inner voice and addressing an audience. I don't think that negotiation is bad; it's part of the craft of producing work we care about. Wanting to connect with others is a worthy goal, as is creating for the sheer joy of creating. What can make it feel unclean is money, especially when financial pressures or seductions push an artist in directions against their own impulses.
Martha, I admit I was almost afraid to read this. That word 'entrepreneur' is one I've kept at a distance, not ever wanting to have to consider being one in order to draw readers to the work I do. I've always wished I could just write the stuff and have an assistant or a PR person or someone--anyone--do the actual selling.
I've hated the idea of marketing from the first day I decided to go public with my writing. Yet, oddly enough, I'm the author of a chapter called "Study the Market Place" in a book our professional writers' organization, Detroit Women Writers, published way back in 1987.
The book, "Voices on Writing Fiction", was picked up by Writers Digest and became one of their book club choices. There were 28 of us who wrote chapters covering all aspects of writing and publishing fiction. How I got the chapter on marketing is still a mystery. I certainly didn't choose it.
I ended up writing some pretty basic stuff. Stuff every writer no doubt already knew, when I look back on it now--choosing a style and sticking to it, appealing to editors of different genres, writing query letters and proposals, how to approach the big honchos at writers conferences--nothing earth-shaking, but it was in those early days, long before the internet, when we were still using snail mail to communicate and the process was even slower.
No AI, either. But the competition was still stiff, and writers still weren't being paid what they were worth.
I'm, thankfully, beyond that now, being of an age where I'm not a hobby writer but I'm also not so ambitious I'm busting my butt to make a name for myself. I can't say I'm exactly 'relaxed', but the anxieties about placing or selling just aren't there anymore. I'm past looking for fame, and that's BIG.
I guess I've said all this and in the end I can't relate. I wish I could tell all writers to just relax and tell their stories in a way that feels right for them and have them really listen. I get it that selling their stories is the ultimate goal. Mine, too, if I were truthful, but at some point, the writing has to take priority.
The writing is everything. It comes first. Once it's done, then the thought of marketing can enter into it, but too often they'll try to think of a place for it or who might be reading it before it's even written. It shows. The spontaneity is gone, the artfulness, the joy. They're in danger of trying too hard.
So that's all I've got.
Thanks for this, Martha. Thought-provoking, as always.
Ramona, I love hearing about your own experience, because it indicates how we could work differently (and how so many of us did). There’s nothing wrong with marketing in the traditional sense - how else do we reach audiences or find new writing? And it’s part of being a professional writer and freelancer. The hitch comes, as you imply, when a writer starts thinking about marketing *before* writing or coming up with ideas, especially if it shapes the whole thinking process. Marketing and editing are different mindsets than writing. Often they overlap for freelancers, but the real threat comes when business language overtakes and coopts the creative process. It’s a variation on the medium is the message - and it’s why using chatbots (with a conversational interface based on persuasion) can also drain the creative inner life out of a writer.
Yes, indeed. I'm glad you mentioned chatbots. Anything artificial isn't writing, it's copying. When it comes to writing I tend to be an old-fashioned purist. I'll use whatever aids I might need, but when it comes to brainpower and imagination, nothing works for me but my own.
Martha!!! I salute you!! You do this every freakin time: move me deeply and make me think deeper. There is no way that you could ever let me down!! What you write here is so honest, and bloody urgent!! Yes, yes, to every word! I struggle with this shit all the time. Every time I am tempted to think “strategically “ about how to market myself I am filled with vile. I just don’t know how to do this. My most personal, vulnerable essays resulted in the most unsubscribes. Does that mean they have failed? Judging by the comments I have received, they have moved à small group of people. In my artistic book this means everything. But Substack reports tell me otherwise. So I thank you, again, so very deeply, for reminding me to focus on what I can actually control: keep developing my craft and want to write better for no market in particular, but whoever would care to read me. You are truly a rare, and important writer!
Oh, Imola, you are a gem - and I know well what a conflict this is on Substack. I have not resolved it myself, beyond trying to figure out what expertise I have that I can sell (for me, it’s writing instruction, for you - maybe? - it’s yoga) and what I write for personal reasons that aren’t (or shouldn’t be) about selling. At this point, I don’t paywall my posts. If I start a series of writing lessons, I may paywall those - but even that makes me uncomfortable. I think the answer is to live with the internal dissonance, and to use it as a writer. Please don’t stop writing your personal posts because of unsubscribes. For those of us who stay, your honesty and bravery shine through 🙏🏽
Reading you all I kept thinking is how I want to become your paid subscriber just because you should get paid for the beautiful and thoughtful writing you put out there. Personally, you don’t need to teach me anything! There are so many wonderful and talented writers here I want to support with my paid subscriptions. I’m using the “income” from my paid subscription for that very purpose! So I guess I need to do a better job selling myself so I could support other writers on the platform…? ;) until I figure this out, I’m more than happy to sing their praises, restack and support in any way that I can. As the L’Oréal commercial goes: “you’re worth it!” Thank you for this article, and all the others!
That’s a wonderful tribute, Imola, and I love the idea of being a reading advocate on Substack - you’ve also made me rethink the paywall on lessons. To be continued…
Unfortunately for the writer, the Big Four rewards certain qualities. Connections, a social media following, a trending identity, youth and beauty, an elite address. That's it. That will get you face time. If writers see themselves as entrepreneurs, can we blame them?
I don't blame writers, Richard. I'm referring to a mindset pushed by business interests, including the Big Four publishers, and conveyed by business self-help jargon (e.g., "empower yourself" with a "platform" and a "brand identity"). Individual authors make their peace with this depending on their writing goals. There's the reality of being a working writer and accepting the tradeoffs. Then there's drinking the KoolAid. For me, the turning point came when I realized all the social-media hustling and talk about entrepreneurialism was draining the life out of the writing I care about most.
Would I trade my talent with Emily Henry's? No and hell no : )
Hear, hear!!
Writing always comes back to thinking— working out our internal world as it intersects with external, and the synthesis of that. AI doesn’t take away the need for that basic function in writers any more than religion does. As I wonder about my place in writing as it intersects with the need to show my thinking on social media platforms, I come to the place of immediacy: What the human animal encounters and processes. I use the platforms but they aren’t my life, they aren’t the art, although they are intertwined. We have to keep thinking and talking about what we experience now more than ever, our minds like tiny candle lights in dense and noisy fog.
This is beautifully put , and I couldn't agree with you more — about immediacy, about conveying our experience in the moment, about synthesizing what we experience in the world with our inner life. "Our minds like tiny candle lights" — oh, yes.
Thanks for this insight Martha. It is far too easy to get caught up in the business side of this thing and forget why we started writing in the first place. I appreciate the reminder. All the best, Matthew
I would call it a necessary practice, making sure that the business pressure on a platform like Substack doesn't undercut real creative energy. But it's also good to build a community here, as you're doing so well, Matthew, and that community also feeds the writing and reading soul. It's a balance, as with so many things in life. I'm just wary of explicit entrepreneur talk because it's so omnipresent and seductive, if we're not careful. We don't own these digital platforms, after all. But as of yet, they can't own me :-)
This article sparked so many insights and strong feelings. As a "recovered entrepreneur" (I thought being one was my only chance to be financially stable so I could be free to go back to writing), I can confirm that the skills and rationalizations necessary to operate a startup and get it funded or sold are incompatible to life. It calls for numbness and a practice of ignoring cues from the body and mind. It calls for reduction: classifying everything and everyone in a category, boiling things down to data points, and massaging (aka manipulating) context to keep up an appearance long enough to exchange this for big money.
Being an artist, writer, musician, etc. is not only incompatible with the requirements of entrepreneurship as it has evolved today, it also challenges and threatens the narrative that upholds its reductive and exploitative nature.
It's true, though, that it takes time and some life experience to be able to tell apart the false messages from the truth, and to realize all along that your art doesn't depend on whether it will sell or not because it's non-transactional by nature. While we cannot divest from the fact that we need money to survive and thrive enough so we can continue as artists, we also should stop expecting or trying to mold our creative practice into a business venture.
There is no cut-and-dried solution to this quandary, especially for those of us who need to work. One of the ways that worked for me was to work in a writing-adjacent field: editing. This frees me up to write on my own terms and not have to turn my writing into a business.
Going on a tangent here: When I first came to the US in 1999, I applied to bursaries and other private benefactors--there were so many choices to fund writers to pursue their own projects. When I searched for these again two years ago, I was dismayed that most of them had become organizations that demanded so much and had so many hurdles for applicants. They all claim to be committed to equity and social justice, but their process reminded me very much of the process for selling a company to VCs. Private bursaries and individual benefactors were how legendary artists in history have created their masterpieces. We need more of this kind of funding for writers and artists again.
Neva, this deserves a post of its own! (Consider publishing it on TW.) You and I are very much in tune. One of the difficult personal ironies for me and you, I think, is that we're good at organizing. We can be and have been entrepreneurial, and made some headway doing so. It's just so darn hard not to be taken in by the excitement and buzz. At times, it's almost felt like I've been fighting against myself — but I've come to realize the fight is worth it. I'm also more comfortable than ever with cognitive dissonance :-)
When I was freelancing for a living, I opted to do editing for most of my income, because, as you say, at least it's adjacent to writing. But I also wanted to keep writing, taking on journalism gigs and starting TW, which meant I was just overall too busy. There are lots of ways to be creative, however, at different phases in our lives. To be continued....
So true!! I feel this every time I wrote a grant application. Trying to sell myself as a worthy candidate. And the competition is fierce. Which is also unhealthy Bea cause it puts us artist in competition with each other, instead of encouraging collaboration. Argh.
I wrote a comment and then accidentally closed the window.. Typical.
Anyways, I agree, Martha. I've always hated the entrepreneur and marketing side of authorship. Back in my naive days, I had the Van Gogh mindset of doing art for the love of art, but I remembered him sleeping in haystacks and starving a lot of the time. It's a delicate balance to survive, play the game, while not selling our souls.
As for the AI quandary, you bring up exactly why it fails in the human arena (among the concerns you've previously brought up). There's no room for nuance.
I think the balance part is key, Tiffany. As I commented to @matthewmlong, I think the community-building aspects of a stack like yours pay off in all sorts of ways — financially, yes, but also the connections with other writers can really spark inspiration and help with thinking through ideas. I know that's the case for me, which is why I like commenting and reflecting on what other writers say. That conversation is not simply about professional networking. It can be inspiriting, and for that reason, the business drumbeat we hear everyday on this platform and across the culture in general needs to be countered. Bringing creativity to all aspects of our lives is never a simple binary: e.g., art vs. commerce. We can live artfully and still make money or do our work regardless. The main thing I regret now is the need for constant vigilance against the digital powers that be.
I spent 20 years being overtly hostile to marketing and business thinking, intentionally acting against that mindset artistically, and then over the past few years have gone on a long run of reading marketing and business books. And I can say with confidence that I still hate it as much as I did on day one.
The only way that I can think to integrate it into practice is to make the art first without thinking about any of that, and then figure out how to find the people that might be into it. But I'm also working on the assumption that conventional thinking about what can gain an audience are generally more narrow than what's actually possible. I mean, if Merzbow can find an audience by doing blistering noise music, there should be people out there who are into just about anything.
Connecting with those people amongst the competing clamor is always the challenge, and it's important to remember that popularity doesn't translate into money. I'm really trying to figure out ways of doing this that feel authentic, and it's tough to do that sometimes because of how much I hate the hustle aspect. And I should point out that I still haven't figured out how to profit from art.
Also, your original essay is from the same issue to which I submitted a Weird Music excerpt, introducing us for the first time. And I'm now in a similar place to where you were in 2010. I have an unstarted Substack post title "The Slow Turn" sitting in my drafts about this particular transition for me, which has been a progression throughout my adult life. I'll probably return to this comment to mine for nuggets!
I hope you do mine some nuggets from this comment, John. I think there will always be a negotiation for creative artists between following an inner voice and addressing an audience. I don't think that negotiation is bad; it's part of the craft of producing work we care about. Wanting to connect with others is a worthy goal, as is creating for the sheer joy of creating. What can make it feel unclean is money, especially when financial pressures or seductions push an artist in directions against their own impulses.
Martha, I admit I was almost afraid to read this. That word 'entrepreneur' is one I've kept at a distance, not ever wanting to have to consider being one in order to draw readers to the work I do. I've always wished I could just write the stuff and have an assistant or a PR person or someone--anyone--do the actual selling.
I've hated the idea of marketing from the first day I decided to go public with my writing. Yet, oddly enough, I'm the author of a chapter called "Study the Market Place" in a book our professional writers' organization, Detroit Women Writers, published way back in 1987.
The book, "Voices on Writing Fiction", was picked up by Writers Digest and became one of their book club choices. There were 28 of us who wrote chapters covering all aspects of writing and publishing fiction. How I got the chapter on marketing is still a mystery. I certainly didn't choose it.
I ended up writing some pretty basic stuff. Stuff every writer no doubt already knew, when I look back on it now--choosing a style and sticking to it, appealing to editors of different genres, writing query letters and proposals, how to approach the big honchos at writers conferences--nothing earth-shaking, but it was in those early days, long before the internet, when we were still using snail mail to communicate and the process was even slower.
No AI, either. But the competition was still stiff, and writers still weren't being paid what they were worth.
I'm, thankfully, beyond that now, being of an age where I'm not a hobby writer but I'm also not so ambitious I'm busting my butt to make a name for myself. I can't say I'm exactly 'relaxed', but the anxieties about placing or selling just aren't there anymore. I'm past looking for fame, and that's BIG.
I guess I've said all this and in the end I can't relate. I wish I could tell all writers to just relax and tell their stories in a way that feels right for them and have them really listen. I get it that selling their stories is the ultimate goal. Mine, too, if I were truthful, but at some point, the writing has to take priority.
The writing is everything. It comes first. Once it's done, then the thought of marketing can enter into it, but too often they'll try to think of a place for it or who might be reading it before it's even written. It shows. The spontaneity is gone, the artfulness, the joy. They're in danger of trying too hard.
So that's all I've got.
Thanks for this, Martha. Thought-provoking, as always.
Ramona, I love hearing about your own experience, because it indicates how we could work differently (and how so many of us did). There’s nothing wrong with marketing in the traditional sense - how else do we reach audiences or find new writing? And it’s part of being a professional writer and freelancer. The hitch comes, as you imply, when a writer starts thinking about marketing *before* writing or coming up with ideas, especially if it shapes the whole thinking process. Marketing and editing are different mindsets than writing. Often they overlap for freelancers, but the real threat comes when business language overtakes and coopts the creative process. It’s a variation on the medium is the message - and it’s why using chatbots (with a conversational interface based on persuasion) can also drain the creative inner life out of a writer.
Yes, indeed. I'm glad you mentioned chatbots. Anything artificial isn't writing, it's copying. When it comes to writing I tend to be an old-fashioned purist. I'll use whatever aids I might need, but when it comes to brainpower and imagination, nothing works for me but my own.
Martha!!! I salute you!! You do this every freakin time: move me deeply and make me think deeper. There is no way that you could ever let me down!! What you write here is so honest, and bloody urgent!! Yes, yes, to every word! I struggle with this shit all the time. Every time I am tempted to think “strategically “ about how to market myself I am filled with vile. I just don’t know how to do this. My most personal, vulnerable essays resulted in the most unsubscribes. Does that mean they have failed? Judging by the comments I have received, they have moved à small group of people. In my artistic book this means everything. But Substack reports tell me otherwise. So I thank you, again, so very deeply, for reminding me to focus on what I can actually control: keep developing my craft and want to write better for no market in particular, but whoever would care to read me. You are truly a rare, and important writer!
Oh, Imola, you are a gem - and I know well what a conflict this is on Substack. I have not resolved it myself, beyond trying to figure out what expertise I have that I can sell (for me, it’s writing instruction, for you - maybe? - it’s yoga) and what I write for personal reasons that aren’t (or shouldn’t be) about selling. At this point, I don’t paywall my posts. If I start a series of writing lessons, I may paywall those - but even that makes me uncomfortable. I think the answer is to live with the internal dissonance, and to use it as a writer. Please don’t stop writing your personal posts because of unsubscribes. For those of us who stay, your honesty and bravery shine through 🙏🏽
Reading you all I kept thinking is how I want to become your paid subscriber just because you should get paid for the beautiful and thoughtful writing you put out there. Personally, you don’t need to teach me anything! There are so many wonderful and talented writers here I want to support with my paid subscriptions. I’m using the “income” from my paid subscription for that very purpose! So I guess I need to do a better job selling myself so I could support other writers on the platform…? ;) until I figure this out, I’m more than happy to sing their praises, restack and support in any way that I can. As the L’Oréal commercial goes: “you’re worth it!” Thank you for this article, and all the others!
That’s a wonderful tribute, Imola, and I love the idea of being a reading advocate on Substack - you’ve also made me rethink the paywall on lessons. To be continued…
Yes, please!