Capturing Chaos

I just had an article published at Associated Content for the first time in a year. I started writing for the site, but was unhappy with the various delays and glitches, especially the amount of time that it took for an article to be reviewed, and then published once I’d accepted their payment offer. That aspect of the site has probably deteriorated, if anything, but I’ve also become more serious about being paid for my writing, which means learning patience. The lure of instant publishing at penny ante sites has worn off.

I’m still going to have trouble writing the kind of SEO-oriented articles that lead to the better offers, but I’ll do it every now and then, with teeth clenched, and hope that page views will make up for low payments on the articles that come out of my own interests and ideas.

This is one of the decisions you have to make when the thrill of being published wears off and you begin to understand the potential for real income. Will you do the work that is highest in demand and that pays the highest wages, no matter how much you hate that type of writing? Or are you willing to settle for less money and retain ownership of your skills and your soul?

Take a look at How to Buy Great Clothes at Thrift Stores . It comes out my own experience, but isn’t the kind of thing that I’m really happy writing. And it shows.

Here’s the final version of the original “off the top of my head free writing” chunk. I really should have kept this consecutive with the longer one, but so it goes.

“Why do so many unqualified people want to be writers? Words are all around us; they’re what we use every day, so it’s easy to think that there’s nothing special about them. If you can speak, you can write; for too many wannabes, daily conversation seems no different from what a writer produces and what ultimately shows up on the pages of books and magazines.

“It’s a very different thing, though, a different world, one you enter either prepared or unprepared. If you start out unprepared, and refuse to change that, you’ll eventually be cast out, whether rudely or politely doesn’t matter, except in how it affects your understanding. Too polite a rejection teaches nothing. It allows the incompetent to believe that if they just keep trying, the doors will open and they’ll be admitted to the inner sanctum and to what they mistakenly believe is an endless flow of money and adulation.

“If one of these aspiring writers looked at what I produced in a 15 minute writing exercise, they might be impressed, even awed. How can someone produce so many words in such a short time? And where do the ideas come from? They have no conception of what goes into becoming a writer, even one who’s just adequate. Even so, they’re convinced they can do it.

“At the opposite pole are those who think that they need to take courses, be instructed how to write. The great writers of the past would laugh at the idea, and so would most contemporary writers; their teachers were the writers of previous generations and those of their own generation worthy of their admiration. They might emulate those writers in the early part of the learning process, but mainly, they spend many years reading and absorbing the language and its uses.

“Reading is the foundation, the core. Without that foundation, it’s impossible to become a writer. The would-be writer who doesn’t read, who hasn’t been reading most of his life, is an empty shell, and all he will produce is the trite shorthand that makes up most of our everyday communication.”