Notes for a new writer

Notes on Being a New Writer

I want to make a few notes here on how I perceive my place as a “freelance writer” having “retired” from a long but conservative career in information systems.

In the mainstream world, “freelance writer” does not enjoy a good reputation as a “profession.” People talk as though it is a fallback occupation for people who couldn’t compete in a “real” profession or who don’t want to pay their dues in a regimented hourly job. Of course, editors complain about too many bad submissions from amateurs looking for fame, and writers complain about increasingly strict contracts by publishers, especially with regard to ownership subsidiary rights. Writers also discuss difficulties with getting acceptable media perils liability insurance and, as freelancers, health insurance. The National Writers Union attempts to address these problems. Of course, one problem is the “winner take all” and “extreme capitalism” culture that rewards the “winners” with enormous royalties and pays midlist persons relatively little. One issue of particular concern has been "work for hire." There is nothing inherently wrong with this practice in many situations when the total compensation is fair and the subsequent uses of the work appropriate, but the exaggerated value of prior fame given by the marketplace does make this an issue for many other writers.

Of course, self-publishing and the Internet, along with passive marketing offered by search engines like Google give anyone with original conyent the opportunity to be noticed. But of course it is untested how writers who introduce themselves this way will be accepted if they try to enter the conventional world of agents, trade publishers, and guilds of people used to making a living at it.

Of course, there is now a proliferation of services and companies trying to offer novice writers (including screenwriters) ways to improve their chances, and new markets that seem to offer a new chance of popularity. There are those who also advocate aggressive “guerilla marketing” by writers—the “what can I do for you” approach. There is a certain focus these days in understanding what customers really want, and what editors and agents think they really want.

So naturally there is also advice against taking oneself too seriously, about preaching one’s own message, using one’s life—and especially trying to sell writing that was started as self “therapy” Some present writing as an exercise in meeting other people where they are, with established cookie-cutter “techniques” for designing plots, characters, and entertaining paradigms, or, in other ways, how to bow to the “how to” self-help market. Controversy is bad, helping and pleasing people is good.

All of this is disturbing. For, after all, I entered the self-publishing and writing world in the 1990s in order to explore a certain slant on certain social, political and psychological problems. I have my own paradigm, philosophy, message, and “message brand” with readers, as noted elsewhere on this site. So, then, how to make this sell in a way that maintains intellectual honesty?

I think, first, it is important to emphasize areas that I know, areas connected to liberty interests in which I have personal and professional experience. So, would I help write a book or script for another person’s struggle with some issue? It would depend on the issue. I cannot be a cookie cutter writer. I could not address someone’s raising a disabled child and not finding health insurance because, however sympathetic the subject, I have no real experience with this area. I could address someone’s struggle with anti-gay discrimination, especially if connected to the military, or someone’s tackling of a censorship challenge, because this is a battle I have fought with subtlety. I can address technology problems that relate to liberty or freedom interests, and such areas as copytight v. file sharing, spam, and Internet practices do that. I cannot fight someone else’s battle out of sympathy, only out of real experience that allows me intellectual objectivity. I cannot realistically help with something a customer can probably do for himself after all (I wouldn’t be needed to write a corporate executive’s speech unless I had an unusual expertise already in his business). But in areas that I care about and have subtle knowledge, I can help with conceptual review, editing, design, organization, research, factual verification, hypothesis testing and actual writing as the circumstances dictate.

Here, too, many kinds of writing are real professions and depend upon the writer’s having specific experience and credentials in related technical areas. These include, foremost, journalism as we know it, but also technical writing and grant writing. These kinds of writing all require objectivity and professionalism and all can be subject to market forces.

This brings to the point of the ethics of working in other areas while writing. In fact, in one way you have to work to know other things and have skills, and also, I think, to “pay your dues” and establish credibility as a person. Of course, there may be an issue for some people because a writer who has other income may “lowball” writers trying to make it on writing or other artistic work alone. Beyond the obvious legal issues about respecting confidentiality in the workplace (including the speculative possibility of "apparent misappropriation") there is the ethical problem that results from the fact that the writer is somewhat a public person, and should be perceived as objective. Therefore, I think there are serious ethical conflicts if a writer has (in most cases) an outside job that requires direct reports, the grading the work of others, compensated advocacy for an adversarial cause, or the public peddling the work as others in a “sales culture” (“always be closing”). This observation means that, in the age of Google, employers of managers, lobbyists, trial lawyers, permanent teachers ought to announce policies regarding they way publicly visible employees express themselves in public. Likewise, I have some problems accepting the idea of a writer (in most cases) becoming publicly and "collectively" active with protest demonstrations, civil disobedience, or "labor solidarity" and picket lines, even given the validity of the causes being fought or the needs of the persons being represented by these causes. All of this is challenging, because many people make a good living by selling the work of others, especially today as content-related jobs go overseas.. Intellectual honesty can be difficult in a commercial setting.

Of course, there is a difference between writing as an “occupation” and selling a specific item of content because of something someone did (and that might be adversarial). But that would not have a followup. One becomes a writer, however, by offering new content regularly and repeatedly, and that requires objectivity.

There is also a need to consider how a new writer authenticates himself or herself. Is it just by sales figures? Is it by third party academic assessment? Is it by hits on the Internet? The First Amendment right to free speech is certainly a pivotal notion, but it may work differently for collective speech, expressive association, or short term adversarial speech intended to protect self-interest; repeated speech intended to attract publicity and eventual personal commercial gain as art or literature might be held to higher standards of objectivity.

Some related links:

http://www.doaskdotell.com/empint.htm

http://www.doaskdotell.com/selfpub.htm

http://www.doaskdotell.com/dadtseq/selfpub1.htm

http://www.doaskdotell.com/resume/comments.htm

email JBoushka@aol.com