the writer is owed nothing

it's me, i'm a writer. I'm owed nothing. Thank god.

There is no way to sugarcoat it, so I’m not going to. You might have read my “artful” approach to talking about the fact that I’m an ex-journalist, but today I will be explicit.

In the hopes of not ignoring the elephant in the room here, I figured I might as well say it: it hurts to be here on Substack, with a journalism degree that I threw away, in the face of trying to salvage my codependency on being a writer while this is a place you’re supposed to play a game.

Anyone who thinks they have business putting words on a page now is pivoting to newsletters as a way to monetize the words that could flow right out. The authentic stuff that “matters” comes out more when you write. Naturally, “personal writing” is revered left and right as a way for us to parasocially connect.

The promise of monetization for being myself [something I can convey over writing, well, for better or for worse] is really intense for someone who’s been looking for an out since they left the proper “writing stuff to get paid” game a few years ago. Writing copy sucks your voice out; objective journalism didn’t keep it in, but I originally set out to become a journalist in the hopes of being a New Yorker essayist some day. Needless to say, things have changed in the last decade or so.

I see how there are people on here who often write about very serious stuff, in lieu of the fact that traditional media pays you dog shit. As a journalist who’s left a legacy publication, they likely gained a nest egg of followers who like their work, and then pivoted here (Noah Smith, Anne Helen Petersen, Heather Havrilesky, Taylor Lorenz any day now, all the like) to continue doing things on their terms without getting shit pay. This makes sense. This does not trigger me.

What does trigger me, that makes me confused and unhappy, is that I have ran into many tech job holders who may view this place as a hobby, a complement to their already-cushy day job, who didn’t go to school and spend their years slaving away reporting feature after feature or analyzing proper English texts.

I get that, “I shouldn’t gate keep.” They’re not bad writers. Some of these people are even my friends. And not all writing should be lumped together.

Thus, for months now, I’ve tossed around this idea of “deservedness.”

Who deserves to make money here? Who should make money here? Should I make more money because I’ve practiced writing more. Should my writing get more money because it has a better chance of being “better”?

Do I deserve more?

No! I don’t deserve more. I’m not entitled to financial compensation, contrary to the narcissistic woke liberal “capitalism isn’t fair” parts of me screaming every day.

I really can’t purport to say I deserve money here. Upon reflection, I realized deeply that I don’t fit the bill of any proper audience. I only got here because I thought it befit me to be a “proper writer,” on this platform, joining other “writers”, and I realized: wait, I don’t want to play that game.

I don’t want to write anything that forces me to maintain a tenuous parasocial relationship with my readers on the basis of being topical or interesting. Life is topical, life is interesting, and I respond to whatever is in my brain, and I hope to God I can prove to myself I still “deserve” to be a writer.

But what if I don’t? What then? What even is a writer? What am I owed because I went to school for this all?

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I read this excellent piece today by Santi Ruiz about how the Substack confessional manifests and it really brought to light a truth I’ve been wrestling with: in the liminal space here, I have no way out. I have no clue what my “identity” as a writer is. I’m disgusted and angry that I don’t know. The person I’m angry at is honestly myself. It’s not the other people out there.

The Substack confessional serves as a vessel for the therapeutic process? Well here it is. Here’s my confession. I’m damning myself by telling you straight up that this place is my therapy for the fact that I should be monetizing this platform and proving to myself that I shouldn’t regret majoring in or leaving journalism.

I’ve known for a while I have a burden to make my personal experience palatable if I want to make money here. I have to be “somewhat socially appropriate,” even if every inch of me is screaming that’s not going to work.

I’ve tried to avoid it. I don’t want this catch-22 of being able to universalize some “truth” I may or may not be qualified to preach. I’m horrified at this idea.

“Writing to an audience of friendly subscribers reduces the risk of being cannibalized, and writing about the self avoids the problems of trying to say something concrete and true about an object in contention,” Santi writes. 

This writing is my stage. What do I want to say? It shifts over the years, but all I do right now is speak with honesty. All I do right now is speak with candor, with pain, that I can only be inspiring to people when I’m at my best, but I’m wrestling with a recovering relationship with heavy attachment to my writing identity.

The sticker price for journalism was an array of mental health issues, having to live in a city with few POC, and moving every couple years to rise up the ladder to get an OK salary and OK acclaim. I was not willing to make this sacrifice. I was also not willing to move into my parent’s basement to write a novel that might make some coin.

I was also not willing to start at ground zero in a thankless industry where I’d be more behind [tech].

So I turned myself into a self-employed marketing and positioning consultant. I got nifty. I got lucky.

My day job now is writing copy for startups and entrepreneurs. I make okay pay, but nothing cushy. I’m always a few clients away from potential poverty. I could’ve probably done better for myself a decade ago, before everyone decided that writing seemed like something anyone can do.

But every day, I question what it’d cost me to do a tech job. A lot of learning I’m not good at, considering I almost failed the AP sciences and maths. A lot of unlearning of a lot of healing I wanted to. That sounds like too much.

What has it cost me to keep my integrity, and to do things that keep my voice alive? A lot of shame.

I’m upset on a deep level that I went to school for writing, and I’ve been backed into a corner over how to make proper money off doing the thing I learned to do. The idea that there are limited spots for good writers already, and you’re taking money you don’t need! has been haunting me day and night. I figured if I’m already doing shit for public consumption, why not be honest here?

I would not advise anyone to be a journalist now. But if they want to be a writer like I did when I was a kid, what the hell do I tell them? That it’s psychologically taxing, unrewarding, that you have to be deeply okay with the possibility no one but you ever rewards you for speaking?

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Have you ever uttered, “Nothing really matters”? It can feel both bleak and empowering, depending on the context of your internal state when you hear that. It depends on what was the status of your beliefs beforehand.

If you believe, “Nothing really matters,” you could possibly feel depressed, because your expectation of things mattering is destroyed, leaving you with a disillusionment of how to go on from here and how to have faith.

But if you believe, “Nothing really matters,” and you previously were really bogged down by the idea of needing something to matter, then man, it opens your brain up to a lot of possibilities and sets you free.

Similarly, when I calm down, here’s what I ask myself: what am I owed?

I am owed nothing. And that’s… nice.

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I don’t deserve anything. And I see the positive side of it.

It actually sometimes smashes open the fact that I don’t have to be here, but I am here. What can I notice about what I”m doing here?

What game am I going to allow myself to play? I’m going to have to be honest: I don’t like a lot of stuff that falls into my orbit on Substack. A lot of it I do like, but that’s not the stuff going viral on Twitter. A lot of stuff going viral on Twitter is written by people with the potential to be good writers, but few of them speak of bravery. Few of them have put in the research to do it journalistically, or understand the personal essay is about bellowing in the face of your own feelings about insane, painful, and soul-grating types of experiences.

I know I don’t want that, regardless of it deserves eyeballs. All I can do is be myself, and humble myself greatly without clouding that it’s just about the sadness. It’s okay to be sad.

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So then, what do I want from an audience?

I want resonance. I want my people to find me.

I don’t want more “attention,” more “recognition.” I want actually for those people who matter to step up and go, hey, me too. I don’t want sympathy. I want people that are in pain too to tell me, same here.

I came to this conclusion, and I write to you from this place: I don’t deserve followers. I don’t deserve success.

I don’t deserve connection. I’ve found it anyway. Capitalism doesn’t let me feel less anxious, but I can choose to understand the consequences of my decisions in a good way.

My mental health has spaciousness to heal when I’m having a bad day. I would so much rather be in pain the way I am now than doing a tech job I feel ill suited for, even if I have a massive inferiority complex about it.

I can frame this as, I don’t deserve more followers. But I also don’t deserve less followers. I’m so, so grateful that any of you follow me, because I don’t have a “tagline” that’s consistent.

What I do know is this: I’m good at witnessing people, because I make space for how much I want to be witnessed, like John Proctor at the end of The Crucible, like Hamlet in Hamlet, like whatever the hell Hunter S. Thompson and David Foster Wallace didn’t feel before they offed themselves.

If this is a public space, for a public audience, I’m writing for people that witness others trying to be honest.

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What do I owe the practice of writing? My best.

And I should stop critiquing the other writers on here, because their goals may be different.

If you want to be good at the confessional Internet essay though, I just ask that you practice your art. You give it your best, not just by reading about writing, but living life and cracking yourself open. Being raw.

You have to practice putting yourself in the story even while you’re telling it. Light reflection — which is usually all you’ll be able to allow yourself if you have a day job to keep up — is not conducive to writing a “proper” essay that matters. This isn’t even a proper essay, not yet. My best writing days are ahead of me.

If you want to be a writer, if you want to have a voice that moves mountains that writes 10,000 words a day, you’re going to have to go through a lot of pain. Because every day, my prolificness is because I refuse to numb myself. My pain is also what makes me feel unfit to be a ‘proper’ writer.

But that’s fine. Because I’m not owed that title. I’m not owed money for my choices. I’m not owed glory.

I just owe myself the integrity of trying my best anyway.