Payment or exposure? What’s your time worth?
I’ll piss some people off with this.
Nick Mamatas, one of my favorite authors, has long been an advocate of getting paid for your writing work (note: potentially inflammatory link), which makes perfect sense to me.
If I put in 20 - 40 hours writing and revising a story, a simple “Hey, that’s a neat story, Michael,” won’t suffice. I’d want the money. I can use money. I can buy things with money, like more printer paper or ink cartridges, things that increase my productivity so people can further enjoy or deride my work. Exposure is fine, but what purpose does it serve? Seems like there are easier ways to get an ego stroking than writing short stories.
However, here in the small press world, there’s a tendency to adopt a “money = PURE EVIL” attitude. Somehow, not getting paid is seen as sticking it to The Man. In reality, there is no Man trying to keep you down, only the sum of your efforts.
It’s easy to believe your work is too revolutionary or underground. It’s easy to blame the publishing industry or the mainstream or any other collective scapegoats. However, going back to Mamatas, his first novel was a Beat road adventure coupled with the Cthulhu mythos in which Kerouac and Burroughs save the world from a demonic cult. I don’t think it gets less mainstream than that. And, yes, he was paid a nice sum.
There’s a difference between being too revolutionary to get paid and being too mediocre to get paid. All creative types have work that they’d rather forget about. I certainly have many pieces that I’d prefer to set aflame, but at the time, they seemed good. That’s why every writing guide suggests setting aside the work for several days/weeks/months.
If you never want to make a dime from writing, then great. I respect your belief. However, perhaps you owe it to yourself and your work to make a few bucks. Don’t you deserve it?
October 13th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
Well, somebody had to say it.
I can respect not getting paid for your writing, on the principle that we all need to start somewhere. But why one would want to actively avoid it? I know we all have to romanticize ourselves as “starving artists” to keep the credit card bill from waking us up in a pool of cold sweat every night, but Jesus - getting paid for what you love is an incredible feeling.
October 13th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
I think that sums it up nicely, JohnNewman. Why WOULD anyone actively avoid payment? If money is just another form of recognition, why discriminate against certain forms?
October 18th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
Well, here’s the thing.
I’ve just arrived at the coffee shop from a poetry workshop down on campus, so “Writer Culture” is fresh in my mind. And that’s definitely the term I’d use - the dirty little secret of writing education is that nobody is exactly sure what makes a good writer, just a competent one. So they teach you the basics, and fill things out with Attitude.
So you get indoctrinated with a whole lot of self-importance, while simultaneously covering the fact that there isn’t a lot of money in this gig. And hey - it’s not all about the money. But some people swing so far in the other direction that they begin to hate money ITSELF, rather than very sensibly not wanting to be a Harlequin galley-slave or something.
And of course, this is all before you count the fact that most undergrad writing students I’ve known aren’t published, and aren’t in any big hurry to get published. I never mention my previous publication in your fine magazine on campus; it’s a good way to get ostracized. Writing undergrads are all told that they’re torturously poetic geniuses, yet none of them have any publication credits; ergo, publication is in no way a sign of a writer’s relative ability.
You gotta understand that writing nowadays is about 10% writing, 90% attitude and psychological defense mechanisms.