There are days when the internet feeds you an interesting series of posts, comments, and articles that all seem to weave together in interesting ways. For example, this quartet of things have all showed up on my radar within a twenty-four hour period:
I’m intrigued by this because the indie publishing world is hyperfocused on hustle at the moment, with a lot of people getting very vocal about the success they’ve had through producing fast and launching content regularly.
It’s undeniably a useful tactic–I’ve seen my own modest gains when Brain Jar releases things on a month-by-month basis, even if they’re just short stories–but I’m also conscious of the skewed landscape I’m working within. One in which definitions of success either sync with default capitalism (I have hustled and come out the end with $$$$) or are predicated on publishing expectations set by the industry as it was several decades ago.
On occasion, when you feel guilty about charging money for your art, possibly even definitions of success predicated on the industry as it was centuries ago, before capitalism had a name and the internet made everything more complex.
Sometimes it pays to take a breath and re-align your expectations with the world and capacities you’ve got right now.
I’ve ended up taking a short, unscheduled break from writing newsletters over the last fourteen days. Regular GenrePunk Ninja transmissions will resume
Like many of you, I have good weeks and bad weeks on the writing front. This week has been rocky, and if
Welcome to GenrePunk Ninja supplemental, where I occasionally post foundational essays written before I launched the GenrePunk Ninja newsletter, especially if they’re
2 Responses
Thanks for those links.
Oh man, I find myself almost having a rage-stroke at the Huff piece about doing all that stuff. Because, yeah, that’s been my life too for the last 4 years. And having been in it too, I have such mixed feelings about these pieces, these contemporary “do it all” (while saying not to), because I don’t know how honest people are being about the fall-out of this kind of functioning. And they generate that same kind of martyrdom feeling, like adhering to King’s “write every day” mantra. If you love it, then you will sacrifice yourself on the altar of whatever this is. Tacitly, that’s the message. Even if your circumstances aren’t like theirs (you don’t have daycare, or a kid who can just be “put to bed”, ability to go to bed at 9, take your pick). And there’s little discussion of the cost, short or long-term, in the way that Hurley is honest about.
I recorded a video with me talking about my experiences a few months back (with full time study/commercial publishing career and baby/toddler/preschooler) after an article in The Australian’s weekend magazine about how much women tend to … not lie exactly, but silence what things are really like… and I haven’t put it up because I’m perhaps a little too honest. And I have a feeling that a lot of the time, writers would rather hear how someone is making it work. Of course we would. I’m just not sure those narratives are long-term helping us to nurture sustainable careers. I’m seriously considering again if I should put that video out there.
What astonishes me about the Huff piece is how comparatively mild it is, compared to the way lots of indie communities talk about productivity. On bad weeks when stress is high, I often struggle to stave off the mindset of “you must write 5000 words every day and release 20+ books in a year” approach that’s valorised.
One of the most intriguing things i’ve seen in recent years was Mason Currey releasing a follow up to Daily Rituals, looking at the rituals of female artists and writers exclusively, and realising that a) the predominantly (privileged) male focus of the first book skewed the perception of how art gets done, and b) focusing on female creators, rather than male, is actually a better fit for the kinds of lives people actually live in the early stages of the twenty-five century.