Writing as !Business

[rowyn]

I read this article by Kristine Rusch about writers and pay.  I like Ms. Rusch's business writing quite a bit: she's generally sensible, knowledgable, and well-researched, although her math and assumptions are sometimes overly simplistic.

 

This particular essay was one of those where her assumptions struck me as especially ... peculiar.  Her chief assumption is that the goal for all writers is to maximize revenue from their writing. The implication is 'If you are writing, and you are not maximizing your revenue from writing, you are clearly an idiot.'
And I find myself imagining a World of Warcraft goldseller writing a rant about how these crazy people who are playing WoW and not selling the gold their characters earn!  What kind of idiots are they?  Don't they know that their efforts are worth money?  Don't they realize how many hundreds of hours they're throwing away for nothing?

 

Or a professional actor railing about the foolishness of amateur theatre: how could anyone perform in a production for free?  Don't they realize that acting is a business?

 

Do you suppose landscapers marvel at the ridiculousness of people who choose to tend their gardens for free? Or movie critics are astonished that people pay to see movies, and then tell other people what they thought of the film for nothing?

 

I'd guess that the average American devotes more than half his waking hours to activities that he doesn't get paid for and doesn't care about getting paid for.  There's nothing inherently foolish about doing something for free, and the fact that other people do get paid for the same activity doesn't mean you're an idiot. Your circumstances and goals may just be different.

 

ETA: lt's a bit unfair of me to single Ms. Rusch out on this -- she is, after all, writing about "writing as a business" and assuming that her audience is interested in making money by writing is fairly sensible -- that's her target audience, really.  Still ... it's worth examining assumptions, sometimes.

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Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I think you are merely seeing the consequence of society's set-up: you like to write, and would like to do nothing but write? Then you must make it pay.

When I read articles like hers (and mine, also aimed at people wanting to make money of their creativity), what I hear is: "This is the only way I can do what I love as often as I can with the least distraction, so by God, I'd better be hard-as-nails about it."

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Cogent! I think you hit the nail, dead center.

[rowyn]

I do feel like she's overlooking a very substantial number of people who 'would like to write, in addition to doing a number of other things'. And ... I don't think it's good business sense to pretend that group doesn't exist. They affect her market, and they're not going to disappear just because she thinks they are underpricing their work.

It does seem peculiar to me that some things are acceptable as hobbies even though professionals also do them, while other things are 'obviously' only done by people who want to make a paying career of them.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I don't think she's overlooking them. I think she's perceiving (correctly, from my limited experience) that the people who would like to write, as well as doing a number of other things, simply aren't interested in doing the business side. They are content to publish online for nothing, or share with friends, or other outlets that don't require the kind of administrative overhead that turning writing (or any other creative endeavor) into a job requires.

I don't see in her writing any put-downs of people who write as a hobby. I don't see her addressing them at all, actually. Which makes sense, since she's not talking to them in a column about publishing/writing business.

[rowyn]

It’s as if writers stand on a street corner with a sign in front of them. That sign doesn’t even say Will Write For Food. It says Will Write For Acclaim. Whatever that means. To some writers, it means being “validated” by the traditional publishing establishment. To others, it means hitting some kind of bestseller list. To others, it means getting 5-star Amazon reviews.

That ... comes across as pretty disparaging towards anyone who doesn't write for money, to me.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

*scratches head* Hmm. I can see if you were a hobbyist reading, you would find that dismissive, but why would a hobbyist read a business column about publishing?

To me, she was very clearly describing several Archetypes I see commonly in other 'we're trying to become writers who make money' circles. The Writer Who Wants to Be Validated is a big one in that crowd, and so are the other two, and oddly, these are pathologies created by the fact that they feel compelled to fit themselves into the weird "no one thinks what I'm doing is serious or important unless x, even though it's incredibly important to me" society we've created.

I wonder sometimes, if we had a society that lionized the arts more, if artists would feel less compelled to justify themselves. I suspect from what reading I've done of historical societies with more respect for artists that this would be so.

[rowyn]

I'm a hobbyist and I read it? I like reading about business. Much the same reason that I read the Wall Street Journal; I find it interesting even if it's not directly applicable to my life.

And sometimes information is tangentially useful, if only in the sense of clarifying one's thinking.

The expectation that artists should justify their art -- whether by making money, or receiving acclaim, or whatever -- is awfully tiresome, yes. v.v

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I have thought for a while about your comment, and have no conclusion about it, except perhaps that I should think about it more. I don't think the existence of free anything detracts from the for-pay versions in a non-commodity market; we're all competing for the same entertainment budget (both the time, and the money budgets), but we're not interchangeable. People will have favorite artists that they will follow no matter what, and a group of 'these people entertain me so if they're around and I'm between favorites, I'll pick up something by them' artists.

This reminds me of the furry artists who were proclaiming that artists underselling them were cutting the feet out of other artists striving to make a living. In a way they're right. In a way they're wrong. Like the economy, it's really too complicated to just Have an Immediate Opinion.

I am several years into developing my opinion. I'm not sure where I will end up. :)

[rowyn]

Yeah, I'm not sure how it affects the market to have some people charging and some not, either. I am *pretty sure* that, whatever the impact, complaining about how the people who don't charge are Ruining Everything is not going to make much of a change in it. :) Not that Rusch is doing that!

(Edited for redundancy.) :)