On Requiem for Early Blogging by Elizabeth Spiers

I try not to be whiny here in My Handbasket. But to get to my point this week, I’m going to start off with some doomerism. I promise it won’t end that way.

Once upon a time, you could write your way to a good living. I dare say those days are gone.

The early days of blogging

Elizabeth Spiers, one of the founders of Gawker, just published her remembrance of those heady days when the internet was fun, Requiem for Early Blogging. She writes about quitting her gig as an equity analyst as her blog blew up into a full-time gig. She’s had a long and fruitful career since then, as a contributing writer to the NYTimes, hosts a podcast for Slate, and bylines in Wapo, New Republic, Fast Company, GQ, etc.

But the post ends with a note that she’s looking for a new gig. Her profile photo shows her behind the mic in a podcast studio, because that’s what writers do—podcast.

I’m not writing all this as a critique of Elizabeth Spiers, who is someone I genuinely admire. Rather, it’s a commentary on the state of writing as a profession. It is a disaster.

The End of a Noble Profession

I wrote marketing content for a while, both in-house and freelance. This is the working stiff segment of the writing world, and I was grateful for the work when I had it. I still monitor freelance writing Reddits, and they are currently pits of despair, full of former in-house people who’ve lost their jobs. The entire profession has been subsumed by the AI wave, and they are all looking for a place to sell their buggy whips. And because many of them were freelancers, they aren’t showing up in the unemployment stats.

The moderator at /freelancewriters

Meanwhile, the demise of journalism has not been overstated. In about a month, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution will send out its last paper copy. I don’t the announcement surprised anyone. Digital will continue, but it’s a different animal and the newsroom is just an echo of a ripple of a Xerox of its former self. Freelancers can find gigs, but not as many as lucrative.

Books? Dear God, no. I have a friend who just published a fantastic novel to not much acclaim. The popular publishing industry has no idea how to sell something that doesn’t already have an audience. Editorial is driven by marketing departments, and marketing relies almost exclusively on identity and grievance. The literary world is turning and turning in a widening gyre.

What’s a Poor Writer To Do?

Dorothy Parker once said, “I hate writing, but I love having written.” For much of my life, I wanted to be a writer, but I did not enjoy writing. When I started my novel, I knew that the writing would be a slog. But I couldn’t not write the story, and so I wrote. Badly, at first. I revised the manuscript many times, and each time I did, I improved not just the draft, but myself. Each pass made me a better writer as I forced myself to deal with my writing mistakes.

I wrote badly until I wrote well enough to enjoy it.

Now, I look forward to my precious, focused writing time, and I largely enjoy the results. I can reread these pieces with pleasure. If someone asks me what I do these days, I’ll most often say, “I’m a writer.” That’s not what pays the bills, but it is how I think. I’m happy to be writing again. And be read.

On Thanksgiving morning, I got a notification from Substack that I’d added my 125th subscriber. For some, that number might seem like a pittance. There are writers on this platform with hundreds of thousands paid subscribers. But for me, this venture is a gathering of friends.

So I am giving my thanks for each of you that have subscribed, read, or joined the conversation. Over the years, I’ve done much work that just disappeared into the void. And when I launched this Substack five months ago, I expected this work to follow those pieces into that dark. I felt the urge to write again and I told myself that doing the work would be enough, regardless of finding an audience.

Instead, there are comments, likes, shares. Real-life conversations over lunch or drinks. I was at a family gathering on Thanksgiving evening, and a cousin arrived and told me that his family had spent the previous day “flaneuring.” Imagine my mutiliation of the French language moving to the next generation. What’s not to love?

So I’m grateful for you, dear reader. Here you are, reading all the way to the end. You should know that you’re the reason there’s joy in the writing.

Song of the Week

When’s the last time I thought of ZZ Top? The beards, the car, the goofy keychain, the digital fuzz guitar effect have all passed into that 80's fog for better or worse.

In high school, My boss at the Record Exchange in Williamsville once showed up in the middle of my Sunday afternoon shift, closed the store and took me to a nearby bar to drink the afternoon away and play pool. He’d done his wife wrong the night before, and she’d tossed him out. This wasn’t an unusual situation. He was drinking buddies with local concert promoter Harvey Weinstein.

I drank cokes, ate a burger, and shot pool. He did shots, played pool, and pumped quarters into the jukebox. He played ZZ Top’s“Blue Jean Blues” over and over again. There was no one else around to complain.

I doubt I’ll listen to ZZ Top again for another decade or so, but today I’m going to queue up the best of as I go about my day. Enjoy.