LizzieMaine
Bartender
- Messages
- 33,722
- Location
- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
History is history, unless you're Henry Ford.
oh come now! The "Occupy" movement was all about heaping scorn on those most well off. I hear "privilege" being applied to those in the middle class.
I wasn't expressing sympathy, simply pointing out that saying scorn is rarely directed at the well off isn't accurate.But don't hold your breath waiting on me to express much sympathy for those poor picked-on billionaires.
^^*^^
My advice to the run of aspiring young writers: Study accounting. Or the law. Consider a career in the trucking industry.
That was my advice 20 years ago, too. But employment prospects are even worse now than they were then, leastwise employment that pays much more than starvation wages.
BUT ... For those with the chops and the willingness to work long, long hours, in full knowledge that fame and fortune will almost surely elude you, well, write. Write and rewrite. Read and read and read. Make a study of the writing you like best until you get a clearer sense of just how the producers of that prose go about their business. And then study it some more.
And it doesn't hurt to buy 'em lunch every now and then.
... I've been asked more times than I can imagine to write for free for this publication or that website and my response is always the same: No. Period. The only "free" writing I do is for this place. And I tell kids who want to be "writers" that if they want to be writers they'd better have a backup plan in place -- maybe a job selling popcorn.
What really gets me steamed are the big-time blogs like the Huffington Post that don't pay the "guest contributors" that make them possible. Given the huge revenue streams enjoyed by such operators, there is absolutely no justification for a no-pay policy, and writers who enable such operations by creating "content" in exchange for "exposure" are suckers, chumps and fools at best, and scabs at worst.
That's the thing - writers do it or it wouldn't be possible. I'd like to get mad at them, but if someone wants to work for free (without being forced or deceived into doing it), then who am I to stay they can't or even get mad at them for doing it?
It kills the value of our work, but again, if someone wants to write for free, I can't see a reason in the world why they shouldn't be allowed to do so. When it first started happening, I thought it would be short lived and once the internet "novelty" wore off, website owners (blogs, etc.) would need to pay for content, but that would just be another thing (in a long list of things in life) that I got wrong.
I used to earn my living doing two things - writing about financial markets / the economy and managing / trading money.