On Writing and Expectations

Pros and cons of being published on freelance publishing sites.

I’ll begin with a short poem I first wrote in 1986 for a Creative Writing class in college. Although the piece of notebook paper is yellowed now my reason for writing has never wavered.

We are the ones who write the words

To complete the pages of life.

For what is the written word

but a record of time through a writer’s eyes.

I have always stood by that premise, although it has changed from time to time in context. I first started writing professionally about a dozen years ago at a time writers could either pick the topic or choose one suggested by the publisher. I made decent money from the publication for my value to them and also based on reader’s comments. I made five to six hundred dollars a month for four or five articles I’d already published, along with a few less successful ones. And a lot of my stuff was read by people who didn’t write. There were no claps or follows, no bells or whistles in a manner of speaking, no podcasts, or tablets and eBooks. Readers made genuine comments on the content because they actually ‘read’ articles and poetry out of genuine enjoyment and to learn something.

I feel insulted that getting paid has degenerated into others having to clap as a way to let me know they like my work. There is such pettiness in how some freelance writing publications now actually demand that…