The goal, of course, is to earn a living wage while doing as little as humanly possible.
This is the real basis of the gig economy, at least for creators—the fabled “passive income stream.” Or if not entirely passive, as least extremely lazy. The ability to make money without actually doing much of anything.
Isn’t that what writing is, too? The idea that you can noodle around with some ideas on the bus for a few years like J.K. Rowling and become a billionaire?
This concept is not new. The snake oil salesmen of the 1800s (and 1900s, and today) peddled cheap faux cures to turn a fast buck. Low start-up costs, high profit margins.
You can buy Lourdes Water Bottle containing Lourdes Water that has been BLESSED IN LOURDES (maybe you can squeeze in the word LOURDES one more time?) for $9.99 on Amazon. The one-star review is priceless: This blessed water didn't work on my evil mother-in-law.
I have got to step up my game.
Why am I slaving away at my kitchen table (which looks like it belongs in an episode of Hoarders, btw) writing things that sometimes—but just as often don’t—make me and maybe five other people chuckle slightly while I earn $6 a day?
Even if, by some kind of freaking miracle akin to the moon reversing its course, I sold a piece to The New Yorker, what does that ultimately accomplish?
I’m not the poet I once thought I was. My words are not going to be drilled into the heads of sixth-graders for the next half-millennium. I’m a “humorist” (not even a comedian). I spent seven years in college so I can write about my dog. I have nothing of real value to offer. I read piece after piece written by actual journalists, actual writers, and I realize what a waste this all is.
And then a lightbulb went off.
I should be selling journals on Amazon.
Journals are the unicorn of the internet— books full of blank pages that people pay money for.
WHO DOES THIS?
Millions of people, apparently. I mean, if you’re up for paying $9.99 for a bottle of water from some guy’s kitchen tap, I suppose you’ve got no problem with purchasing a book full of blank pages.
It’s like those greeting cards you can buy that are blank. Man, I’ve paying good money for somebody else to convey my deepest thoughts and emotions. A blank greeting card is like English homework—no thanks.
I mean, I have a journal. Of course I have a journal.
It was a gift, and I’ve scribbled some ideas in it out of a sense of obligation to the pink slab that stares at me accusingly from the bottom shelf of the coffee table.
Most of my ideas I either send to myself in an email (which I never look at) or dictate as notes on my phone (which I never listen to) or scribble down on a scrap of paper that I either lose, can’t read, or gets buried beneath the avalanche of other notes layering my table like the sediment in an ancient river bed. Seinfeld does that great bit about not being able to read the notes he wakes up in the middle of the night to scribble down.
Maybe that’s my goal—to be a one-namer. Seinfeld. Sedaris. Bombeck.
Potter.
That’s not even my name. That’s my married name, one husband removed. My real name is buried in the depths of serial matrimony and doesn’t feel like it’s mine any more than Potter does.
(A few examples of my notes: Chinese food photographer; fortune cookies; error codes for Millenials; CPS & Pigpen. I know—it’s a gold mine, amirite?)
As I slowly research this brilliant idea, I find that people are apparently drawn in by the journals’ covers. So basically, many of these journals are more art objects than actual tools. The expensive ones have prompts and whatnot, witty sayings, poorly drawn cartoons.
It’s disturbing how many of these journals are categorized under “gratitude”, that that many people need to physically remind themselves they have something to be grateful for.
I can jot down some witty sayings and insert a graphic or two. It’s not rocket science. It’s not writing a 2,000-word article about future trends for the Economist.
There’s an enormous pool of gullible, desperate people out there willing to part with their money.
Is it ethically questionable? Probably. Am I going to try it? Also probably.
I could also assemble some of my many, many, many “essays” into a book and peddle that on Amazon too. But that will only kill the dream. Real writers have agents and publishers, somebody in an art department somewhere who designs a cover and chooses the typeface. They’re backed by a “team” who answers their calls and blows smoke up their ass about how well the book is going to sell.
If I do it myself, it’s just a bunch of construction paper held together with yarn that I force my family to read.
I used to have a great editor that made me feel that way, that I was a real writer. If I called her office, I felt like William Randolph Hearst calling down to the press room. The receptionist’s voice brightened: “Yes, Ms. Potter. Right away, Ms. Potter.”
That great editor has been supplanted by (young) people who are grudgingly letting me hang around while they slowly wean me from the publication’s $75-a-pop teet.
I need to take the next step. I’ve got a book in mind, by which I mean I have one character’s name and a vague idea that it’s a comedic crime mash-up à la Elmore Leonard.
That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.
Maybe after I hit Starbucks, I’ll stare at my dog for a while and scribble some undecipherable notes in my journal.
I have two thoughts about this essay. First, you've laid bare my thoughts (cue "Killing Me Softly" by the Fugees). Second, how in the hell are you earning 6 dollars a day writing?! Tell me your secrets... 😆
So, this did make me laugh...sadly...because I've been there and done that...but so wish you wouldn't wait the 40+ years I did to see that what I was, was a story teller. And how that story came out doesn't matter, (and now there are podcasts, and audiobooks, and ebooks, and serials, and games, and .... ) and that people will, in fact, pay to hear a good story. I now realize my 30 year career as a history professor was 30 years of honing my story telling (how to be humorous, describe people in a way that 18 year olds could actually relate to, and provide a plot that kept them engaged until the bell rang that class was over.) Then, self-publishing arrived, I could stop intermittently shopping that mystery novel I had written 30 years earlier around to bored agents and dismissive editors) and I could come out as a story teller of fiction, who was a published writer, who people actually read, and wrote me reviews of those stories, both lovely and nasty. I also discovered that 30 years as a professor of US history to freshmen, with reviews by these students every semester, meant I had nice thick skin so even the nasty reviews didn't hurt so much). But the lovely ones outnumbered the nasty and so I wrote more and more, and at one point (back in the indie gold rush days) I made more than I had been making as a history professor. But I also have so many more stories to tell, and so many more novels, and novellas, and short stories I want to write--but the years are now limited--and it makes me sad when I see young excellent tellers of stories such as yourself, still let those agents, and editors, and gate keepers suggest you aren't a writer if they aren't buying you. End of rant. :)