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Replace "pulp fiction magazine editors" for "algorithms", and you see that these sentiments are very similar to those faced by writers over a century ago.

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Yup, and it's not just writing. Goes way, way back.

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Sadly, the folks who need to take this advice to heart most are the most likely to ignore it.

The best SEO advice I've ever read is to write for people first. Then tweak the structure and title and all that other stuffus to make it as likely as possible that those people can find you. Cuz being poor sucks.

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Exactly. God. I work in SEO. Number one metric that affects ranking is retention. If readers aren't staying, google doesn't want you on top. Write for people, tweak to help robots know where to classify you. Because yes, being poor sucks. And thanks for the restack, I really appreciate it. : )

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I know just enough about SEO to be a danger to myself and others. But, yeah, I’ve always thought time on site was/is a too often overlooked metric (and kissing cousin to retention as a quality signal).

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Yup, you are dead on there. Time on site is way too overlooked.

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100% agree! If we weren't here for the algorithm in some form, we'd just be writing in our private diaries/journals, not online in a public space - hoping that "our tribe" will see our stuff. I care about the algorithm. I'm just trying to not make it the focus/end goal of my writing

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Great way to look at it. It should never be the focus, the reader is the focus. But it does help find the reader, that's for sure

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Here's what I think: any version of the "I'm not here to chase algorithms; I'm writing from my soul" statement translates directly into "I'm afraid I'm not good enough." Which is something all writers (except the psychopathic ones) have to confront. The point is to confront it, not bury it under purist nonsense.

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Jan, I laughed out loud at the purist nonsense part. Indeed. How well put!

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Of course writers care or they/we wouldn't be writing....yes? Dancers dance, musicians play, artists create, builders build, sailors sail, writers write. There may be aspects of social media that I don't care about much and some parts I may not like but c'mon, it's a platform for expression, not my life.

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There is a logical fallacy that is repeated in this piece.

If I do volunteer work because it makes me happy to do so, and is obviously “not about the money” because there is no money in it, but then, because my good work gets noticed my a big philanthropic organization, I receive a $10k prize, YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I’M TAKING THE MONEY. But that does not change the fact that, when I was originally doing the work, it was truly not about the money. The fact that one would accept money for one’s art does NOT mean that one had earning money in mind when creating the art in the first place.

I write without thought of making money for it. I assume that I will not. I write as part of my relationship with myself, my family, and the small community of writers I write with and among. You can arrogantly call it “bull”, or maybe sour grapes, but I have spent my life making enough money to survive and raise a family—and enough to live comfortably in retirement so that do DON’T have to write as a means of making money—which I find specifically deleterious to the quality of my writing and the pleasure I take in it.

If I were to write with the thought of how my writing would be judged by an algorithm for the purpose of making money, it would change what and how I write, and that writing would no longer serve my purpose. What small amount of money I have earned from making art (including for performance pieces and music) I have donated to my less-fortunate fellow-musicians, my writing group (a non-profit coop), and our local First Nation organization, the Wiyot Tribe, as part of reparations and rematriation.

I am just middle-class, but if I needed to make more money, I would find another, easier way to earn it, of which there are many. My writing, as with most of the writers and musicians I know, is art, not commerce.

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Fair point, but I think both of those things can be true at the same time. One can write for catharsis, to think through an idea, etc. And you can also have zero expectation of any given piece making money while simultaneously wanting it to.

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22 hrs ago·edited 22 hrs agoAuthor

Oh I have so many questions for you Michael. The Handmaid's Tale -- is that art or commerce? And if you write your piece first, and then ask yourself -- after the fact -- how to make an algorithm work for you with the piece you wrote so it finds the readers that want to read it, does that change what you write so it doesn't serve your purpose anymore?

And if a woman wants to devote her life to studying the brain disorder her brother has, should she be expected to find another way to pay her bills and if not, why do we expect that of writers?

I promise there's no sour grapes here. I have worked for myself, from home, for twenty years doing what I love. I donate, too, though for me it's education in developing countries. I have a passion for sending little girls to school that would otherwise not get to attend due to cost.

And to circle around to your opening point, we aren't talking about receiving an unexpected prize. We are talking about people who write on sites that pay writers and then pretending their writing is somehow more genuine, more soulful, more honest than a writer who cares about the very things that get them paid.

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The fallacy was in asserting that because someone would take money offered for their writing, that money was the intent in the first place. I might have gone a little strong due to taking issue with their tone in saying that we who are not thinking of some money-generating algorithm are lying—when they can’t know our true intent.

I think Handmaid’s Tale was art. As an already-successful author, Atwood already knew she would be able to sell her art. But she was writing to her OWN standards, not even to her editors, by that point in her career, and hardly to some algorithm. I believe she would have written it even if she didn’t know it would sell. But aside from the art/commerce dichotomy, her work was also explicitly political. As such, its commercial success was part of its success politically. If no one read it, it wouldn’t have had the political impact that it did. So there are interactions among the artistic, commercial, and political aspects of writing. But it is art that is the sine a qua non of what we do, imo. If we put the other two horses before that cart, we are in danger of losing it all.

If a person is writing for such an important personal reason as disseminating her research on her brother’s disorder, then I’d say that she would probably find a way to do the work regardless of whether it paid. Most musicians I know do other things to make a living just SO they can do their art without worrying about it being commercial. It’s personal expression—a need, like helping one’s brother. It is the demands of commerce that put that expectation on writers. Our economic system does not value art for art’s sake, but for its commercial value in the marketplace. Would that this was not so.

Good on you for being a giver. Would that you were a billionaire!

I dislike disingenuousness. But the original post was using the example of a writer who would take money after the fact for writing that was not done with money in mind, as proof that they had money in mind all along. I love a lot of great writers who write to get paid, and that’s fine. I just didn’t like putting that money-first intention on writers who aren’t writing with money in mind.

As a teacher I walked this tightrope of loving what I did, but needing to be paid more than a pittance. It irked me when people would say what saints we were or how dedicated we were. (That is = to saying, I know you’re not getting paid enough, but thanks). We were trying to be paid professionals. It wasn’t about loving it so much that we’d do it for free, because it is a vital function for society and society should pony up! But we still loved it. People write for free. No one teaches middle school for free. Why is that?

In the end i was speaking personally, because I am not lying or BSing when I say that I write for my own reasons that are not related to money. I DO want to communicate, but I think the commercial part of the equation often gets in the way of communication. I’d prefer to opt out of putting up paywalls. I understand that others may need them for their own purposes, but I do not think that enhances their art—even if it may enhance the political impact of their art IF they get sold widely by some other entity, like a publisher, who disseminates their work.

Thanks for the great reply.

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This is a great conversation, agree. Funny thing is, the original post started out with someone insinuating she is more "genuine" because she doesn't care about algorithms. lol. But then I expanded it to the additional little lies people tell themselves. It's absolutely true that some people write not caring if they make any money and being happily surprised if they do. But that's not the same as the person who pretends that not caring about money or algorithms (or whatever) somehow makes them more genuine, you know? And that was my point. :)

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Honest and spot on. Thank you, Linda. Hard to have cred if you can't even be honest with yourself.

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23 hrs ago·edited 23 hrs agoLiked by Linda Caroll

I think a lot of that "I'm writing from the soul" is a defense mechanism to paper over some insecurities. and a performative one at that.

Sure we're all here to work at our craft, and of course we don't like algorithms, but it'd be incredibly dishonest if I said I didn't run my newsletter as a business and want to make money doing it.

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Your first sentence nails it Kevin. The only writers I know that aren't writing from the soul are the ones that churn out content to meet a corporate checklist so they can get paid. Otherwise, I can't think of a reason anyone would write if they weren't compelled to.

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I think there’s too much competition for me to do well, too much luck involved. I worked really hard for a few years and things were going well but things changed and I failed to adapt. I lost my drive and I can’t get it back. I just hang around and do a little here and there, which I know won’t produce results. I have talent and worthwhile points to make but without drive I’ve got nothing. I would be thrilled to make $50 a story. That hasn’t happened in a long time.

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I hear you on drive. Went through several months when I had nothing. Choke out 2 posts a month and lucky if they made $20 each. It's disheartening. For me, hitting a new topic sometimes helps. Not always, but sometimes.

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I hopeI never say anything that pisses you off😞

You know years more about what you’re talking about than I do. I’m learning every time I try to put the pen to the page. Of course I care if the algorithm consigns me to the garbage can again and again.

But, when I write what I see and I live and feel most closely - I can’t wonder what the algorithm is going to do to it or I might as well say I’m the cheese after playing Farmer in the Dell.

When the editing and the deletions of whole paragraphs happens before I fight with six options for a title - I think how will a reader I never know see this story?

I try to ask that question again and again. Then I let it sit. Hours or days depending on how connected I feel to what I wrote.

When I choose the tags and publications - Momma’s baby left home.

Of course, I hope many people read it, and many people do. I like to get paid for that too.

I don’t play coy.

But every once in awhile I write something just because it has to have its chance to be. I do something new - the best that I can and I even self-publish it. It’s out there and I wait to see who finds it.

Like a long lost child that wanders home with a story of adventure - there’s still room for that in my life.

Enjoy how your writing always makes me think! All my love, dear friend 🌹

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Jocelyn I don't think you could piss me off if you tried. I look for you, often, curious to see what you'll say because you're genuine. People seem to confuse writing "for" an algorithm with considering how to best reach readers once the writing is done but I can't do much about that. And you're so right. Once it's done and out, the baby bird has flown the nest and onto the next. lol

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We care for each the best we can, but then it’s the reader’s turn.

I have had some people ask me what topics are the ones they should write about.

It has to start with the stories that grow out of your experience and ways that you have learned. AI can do kitchen table summation of a Wikipedia article. But it can’t do you struggling to deal with a sudden change that makes feeding your family chancy. It also can’t do how afraid you are of success. Some people pee their pants at the thought of a publisher offering you a five book deal. Others get uncomfortable if there marriage starts to go to smoothly - they become convinced their husband’s being nice because he’s sleeping around. He was just a workaholic who never slept so he started feeling guilty and brought home flowers every night.

No trust in that marriage- they didn’t last.

Self-sabotage is real. Worrying too much about what you write before you get it on the page feeds perfectionism.

Slicing, dicing and rewriting is part of what wrapping a present is all about.

It’s a separate essential part.

I have a question what do you think about stories about changes in earnings from month to month?

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I'm not sure I understand the question. Do you mean individual stories that fluctuate in earnings month to month? Or overall earnings? Cause hoo boy, I got opinions on both of those and then some lol

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I mean both I guess. I see some people write about celebrating but others write about their experience as if it’s unique and fluctuations are not built into writing for people online.

None of us know what reader’s moods are we all miss the head of the timely trend maybe me more than you.

What I want to know is if the fluctuations over the last four months are way out of the ordinary- in your opinion?

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Thank you, Linda. I am glad Medium knows how to get my stories to people who follow me or the topics I write about. Some of it, like SoulCollage is so nitched, it would be nigh on impossible for a human to find the other four folks who follow that topic. So Al Go Rhythm is my friend. He's a good dancer, too!

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You made me laugh Marilyn.

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Dropping truth bombs like always 🙌

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lol. Thanks Sophie

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“I been rich and I been poor, and believe me, rich is better”. Mae West

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Boy, that's the truth. This is why I enjoy seeing your name here, Martin. lol

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Every great truth I've heard in my life or read in some book, that hit me like a brick from forty feet above came to me as clear as a bell from Notre Dame. Ding, there it was. And every single one of those truths had something following it, a little more quietly, with a little less fanfare and it was the word - but. Every truth has a but at the end, because even the greatest truth won't work 100% of the time. I agree with most of what you say in this post, think it's great. And I have heard all those stories and laments from writers who do it for the glory. That's fine, that was me once. But every algorithm, every tweak done by Google is made by humans with an intent and a vested interest. Show me an algorithm that is 100% pure, fair and equitable and I'll show you something one step from God. I ran large Internet retail websites in 2002-2006 when Yahoo was Big, Google was small and SEO was something you had to work at every day like building the pyramids because the algorithms KEPT changing. Every time we gained 10 feel, we lost it the next day. Every algorithm that benefitted us and others on Tuesday was gone on Friday. Why - to improve efficiency, to improve bottom lines, to be in control of the traffic. With millions of articles coming in an algorithm will not be altruistic. It will be tailored to achieve certain stated objectives - stated by humans. Just a fact. We do our best as writers to track with them - (picture us in our offices trying to catch a fly with chopsticks). Otherwise, we do our best and wish for the same. Cheers

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God, old memories Joe. Yahoo was a PITA. They were like Medium's boost, but in search. Real humans would look at the site, decide if it deserves distribution or not. Funny thing about Google is they just want to keep people from coming back to search again. Not that they're altruistic because they sure aren't. But the 600 algorithm changes every month are to keep one step ahead of the people trying to hack their way to number one. What a mess it is. Then there's Medium's algorithm, and Substack's and it's a mess, to be sure. I don't blame anyone for saying screw it all. Where I have issue is when they sing the "makes me a better writer" song. Only thing that makes anyone a better writer is writing better. lol

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💯 fucking percent. It’s just more vanity nonsense. Reminds me of singers who can’t sing yet try out on American Idol. Best way to protect yourself from failure is to claim its all an art form. Thanks for identifying the white elephant in the room. You not only called it out but served it up for dinner.

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One bite at a time. Only way to eat an elephant. lol. Thanks, Kerry. :)

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Yup! You have to play the game!

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