So, I created a burst of short posts, which my blog fed into the machines I say I’m trying to get away from, and low and behold, I got twenty hits, an all time high for this series of posts.
Even a step removed, social media is pulling my fucking strings.
Because social media doesn’t want or need a thoughtful, well crafted, insightful, 1000 word thing a day from me. It wants little chunks of click baity engagement, and even if I am siphoning away traffic, the algorithms can’t help but reward me for doing what social media most wants you to do.
Touch it, poke it, think about it, ALL THE TIME.
The same is true of writing for Amazon as an indy author. Amazon indy’s can not write a good book a year and expect to get any traction. They have to write 4-12, or more, books a year, of whatever quality they can muster, and if they hit a certain level of quality, the algorithms, the marketing opportunities of that catalog, can make an indy career, an indy income, possible.
Look, there were never, ever, that many mid list authors living middle class lives writing a book or three a year, which is sorta what I wish could happen. I think, when the average human closes their eyes and thinks about writing, (and in fact, how writing is sometimes portrayed in fun movies) that is what they picture. It’s kind of like the rock group making an album a year.
Think about it. Every artist or group you love making, say, 30 or 40 things over a lifetime, maybe 10 of them great. A few things a year. You follow a few dozen creators. Get hungry? Find new artists. That’s a diet that works for everyone.
Now imagine people compelled by algorithms created to enrich billionaires, spewing mediocre content at ridiculous rates, hustling like mad to induce a kind of compulsive addiction to their brand, doing whatever it takes, like olympic athletes destroying their bodies for a few competitions.
That is what modernity, or late state capitalism, is demanding.
And they do it via the Feed.
Or maybe it was always thus. The creative life is always a hustle on the edge of poverty. Maybe my negativity bias sees dystopia in the ordinary.
I’ve made my peace with this reality by separating my money-making activities from my creative activities. My goals for the two are different: with the one, I aim to make as much money as I can in as little time as possible doing things I enjoy enough to keep at it. With the other, I aim to feed my soul doing things that are more deeply meaningful to me, whether or not I make any money at it. There is some overlap: both involve writing, and I hope to make some money eventually on the creative work. But I don’t put pressure on my money work to feed me creatively, and I don’t put pressure on my creative work to pay my rent. In other words, the money work sponsors the creative work.
I am effectively in the same boat, only I lean on family subsidy as I agonize over my inability to make money sticking to creative work OUTSIDE corporate america.
I think, now that I talk to you about it, that my deep ambivalence about late-state capitalism coupled with my living off the proceeds of it through my wife’s corporate work, produces this deep dissonance.
To be fair, I felt awful making good money from corporations when I did that. So I’m sorta stuck between the two awful feelings, working and praying, but not hard enough, I guess, for creative work, the book covers, the blogging and social media feeding into a writing identity and writing products somehow, magically, to heal the breach and get me out of pincers of these two feelings.
There was a time, when my skills were in demand, when I wanted to go downmarket somehow, make less and work for something better; but I didn’t, I just followed this path of least resistance, meandering through random corporate clients.
I am fascinated by business and capitalism; I sorta enjoyed my entrepreneurial years, where I failed with a group of smart friends to get anything going while my friends gradually went broke or were washed back into corporate American where ever they could find footing.
I refused to go back in. Hammering away, writing furiously, floundering around.
Gotta learn to live with my choices.