You can’t "just” be a writer

The digital world has opened up opportunities for writers to use their writing in day jobs from anywhere. Competition is fierce and not being recognized for artistic talent can be frustrating.

Being a good writer is not enough.

(Almost) everyone can do it, or think they can do it, and do it just as well as anyone else.

Because the value of writing has changed. It’s no longer a specific skill; the ability to do it has broadened.

The templates, the tools, the how-to books, and AI make it so.

Many people now sell and offer writing courses.

The type of people who would never have done so many years ago. They’re not trained in the classic sense: they’ve learned algorithms or the viral templates or jumped on trends before others.

Stoked?

As writers, we should be stoked that people are writing. But I don’t usually feel that way.

However, most of the writers I interact with on various online platforms don’t like what most people are writing.

• They don’t like the tone of Instagram captions.

• Or Twitter threadbois.

• Or that books titled with an F*word sell immediately.

• Or Rupi Kaur poetry books at Barnes and Noble.

It seems that everyone is profiting off of writing, except for the people that actually like writing.

Frustrated much?

Where The Frustrations Come From

These random frustrations get thrown in the pan and then simmer down to a few things:

1. Lack of credentials: These new writers didn’t get a degree in creative writing or study this for 45 years

2. Lack of talent: These new writers don’t really know how to write

3. Lack of appreciation: They don’t even know who Saul Bellow is???

I’ve been frustrated that genre writing, listicles, and clever Twitter bro-etry platitudes will sell more, and get more attention.

Leverage Your Writing

As AI writing increases, two things are happening:

1. Writing is being twisted into a commodity

2. While the opportunities are flourishing.

There are more platforms, places, and outlets for writing than in the history of the world.

In that regard, there is no better opportunity for writers.

But now, the competition is fierce. More intense.

Dangerous, even.

Instead, what we need as writers is to leverage more of our writing.

To take that core competency, and bend it into something unexpected.

Find a sliver of an advantage and step into it.

Traditionally, we hoped our talent and unique storytelling abilities would be that leverage. That our fiction would transcend all of the impossibilities.

That is a pipe dream for most.

However, the digital world has opened a tremendous opportunity that many of the famous writers of our time didn’t have.

For instance, William Faulkner was a mailman. And then he wrote Hollywood screenplays.

He had to get a day job, and then he layered on a skill — screenwriting — that was in demand.

He had to move to Hollywood to do it. So did F. Scott Fitzgerald.

They couldn’t even work from home or their coffee shop of choice.

We can now use our writing in our day jobs. Or build our own day jobs with marketable skills.

From anywhere.

That is a unique opportunity.

You can build your work and also build your art and they do not have to be the same.

To Keep Writing, Find that Other Skill

The hope of the novel was foolish from the start.

For people of a certain age (me), digital writing has opened up beyond what we first thought was possible.

Newspapers used to be the only “day job” option.

So was teaching.

Those were both reliable day jobs that used the core competency—writing—into another skill, such as teaching or reporting. They had other skills beyond writing, even if it didn’t seem like it.

To keep writing, you need another skill.

You thought the writing was enough.

It’s not.

Layer on a core skill to leverage your writing.

The influencers, the how-to creators, the copywriters, and even the teachers do something else beyond their art.

Others are:

1. Better salespeople

2. More personable

3. Good at networking

4. Killer at business.

I went into marketing. SEO specifically.

I was in a writing job, then jumped to a marketing job where I didn’t do as much writing. Then I went back into content creation and writing.

I still edit and string together sentences almost every day.

Expand What Success Is

When I was in graduate school, several fellow students I knew were in a creative writing program.

I didn’t really like them, because:

1. I was jealous

2. I was working on a novel + working a day job + attending grad school classes

3. I became friends with a poet, but last I heard, he wasn’t writing at all

4. A big degree? For nothing. He didn’t have another skill on top of it.

I wanted to write novels or I said I did, and didn’t actually write anything

I don’t consider myself very talented at writing, and that’s been difficult for me to accept.

What I did do — somewhat more successfully than before, not as successfully as others — is recognize that even if I was a good literary writer, I needed another skill on top of it.

And that may be what’s missing for you. Put together something that uses your core competency, plus another skill. Then you get to do part of what you’re good at and enjoy doing. You may find more success in a career, while also prying open time for your art.

It’s not enough to “just” be a writer. What skills will you add?

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Last Week

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Last Things

• "You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."--Saul Bellow

• Really enjoying LiveBlog (2023 Substack edition) by Megan Boyle!

• Reading “The Every” by Dave Eggers. It is like if Facebook took over Amazon. It focuses on how minor grievances and conveniences escalate into something “good” and then render us as nothing. Not really scary in the traditional sense, just more about the creeping nature of the surveillance state.

• Enjoying the newsletter? Send it to a friend.

• I have novels. Maybe I’ll even write some again.

• Find me on Twitter. Or Notes.

Keep going,

Josh Spilker