The Fallout From Ten Years of Watching Grey’s Anatomy:
After escorting a friend to a PT appointment I boarded the hospital elevator, as did a Handsome Young Doctor ® . One man, one woman, in one hospital elevator….? For a moment, even as I noticed the really, really serious expression on HYD’s face – a look that made me realize he probably would not get the joke/reference – I considered flashing him a perky smile and saying, “So, aren’t we supposed to be having sex?”
* * *
Still more reasons to go on living…and quit writing?
The first time I ever heard the word “content” used in its current context, I understood that all my artist friends and I — henceforth, “content providers” — were essentially extinct. This contemptuous coinage is predicated on the assumption that it’s the delivery system that matters, relegating what used to be called “art” — writing, music, film, photography, illustration — to the status of filler, stuff to stick between banner ads.”
“I’ve been trying to understand the mentality that leads people who wouldn’t ask a stranger to give them a keychain or a Twizzler to ask me to write them a thousand words for nothing.”
(Tim Kreider, “Slaves of the Internet, Unite!” NY Times op-ed)
Like Kreider and many other writers, I’ve had “opportunities” presented to me, from media and other publishing outlets, wherein I could write articles, guest blog posts, even a regular op-ed/feature column. Opportunities to work, without pay. Sometimes these offers were presented via fellow writers, who should know better…and perhaps do… and perhaps inwardly cringed when they offered their bosses’ party line, which was, essentially, that being published in ____ (The Oregonian, The NY Times Review of Books, The Furrowed Eyebrow Literary Review) is an honor, and that such “exposure” is equivalent to compensation.
Such offers almost always begin with the Those Offering the Guest-Permanent Writing Gig telling you, the writer, how much they admire your work. Although not enough, evidently, to pay one red cent for it.
Like Kreider, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that people who would never ask their barber to give them a haircut for free or expect their market to provide them with a bag of groceries at no cost (“I’ll tell everyone these organic brown eggs are from New Seasons – it’ll be great exposure for your store!”) will, with a straight face and a clear conscience, ask authors and artists to write an essay/illustrate a brochure for them, for nothing.
(In his essay Krieder briefly and drolly compares his situation to that of his sister, a pulmonologist: “as far as I know nobody ever asks her to perform a quick lobectomy — doesn’t have to be anything fancy, maybe just in her spare time, whatever she can do would be great — because it’ll help get her name out there.”)
And then there is Patricia J. Williams’ so-good-it’s depressing article, “Writing as Women’s Work” (The Nation). Williams uses the case of zoologist and Scientific American blogger Dr. Danielle Lee, a busy scientist who politely declined an offer to do a guest blog gig for no remuneration, [1] to illuminate the situation of those of us who labor in disciplines that have been deprofessionalized and undervalued in the digital economy. Although I shouldn’t be surprised by the phenomenon, until reading William’s article I didn’t know that writing is also falling victim to outsourcing (“…companies like Journatic, which supplies supposedly ‘local’ news coverage, have outsourced stories to nonlocal freelancers across the U.S., as well as in the Philippines, where writers are given ‘American-sounding bylines’ and asked to commit to 250 pieces/week minimum at 35 to 40 cents a piece.”).
In the year since I’ve started this blog I’ve no doubt bellyached mentioned several times the fact that every week (and some weeks, every day), I consider the business end of writing fiction [2] and ask myself why I do what I do. And I come across these two wonderfully written – and likely poorly paid for [3]– articles, and I feel…I don’t know how to describe how I feel. Like the lyrics of that immortal C & W song: I don’t know whether to kill myself or go bowling.
The business end of writing
********************
Public Service Announcement #1
And now, we pause for a moment to piss off the faithful
before returning to our regular programming.
Theology in a nutshell [4]
Public Service Announcement #2, aka
Law and Order, WPD [5]
A small but fervent request: let’s all do our part to halt the creeping catastrophization of our language. You can be upset about something, you can have your feelings genuinely and even painfully hurt, without being “destroyed” or “devastated.”
Definition of DEVASTATE
1 : to bring to ruin or desolation by violent action
2: to reduce to chaos, disorder, or helplessness
(The flood devastated the town; The disease has devastated the area’s oak tree population; The hurricane left the island completely devastated.)
You didn’t get the promotion, you flunked the [6] admissions test, you were snubbed by the in-crowd at the school or office cafeteria, maybe you even received an alarming medical diagnosis. But were/are you devastated, or destroyed:
1. Ruined completely; spoiled.
2. Torn down or broken up; demolished.
3. Done away with; ended.
4. Killed.
5. Subdued or defeated completely; crushed.
6. Rendered useless or ineffective.
If I make an upsetting or dismissive remark to you, I may be acting rude, but you have not been bullied. Your child’s exclusion from the neighborhood kid’s birthday party is hurtful, and the memory of being left out may affect him/her for some time, [7] and you, as a parent, were disappointed on behalf of your child, and maybe more than a little pissed off. But really, was your child – were you – demolished or destroyed?
Stop the hyperbole, and reserve such catastrophic classifications for situations (The Rwandan Genocide, The Space Shuttle disasters, the LA Dodgers trading Pedro Martinez for Delino Shields) that can truly and accurately be described in no other way.
* * *
I hope these PSAs have not annihilated your sense of your place in the cosmos, and that your hijinks will still ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
[1] And was subsequently smeared by the blog editor (“Are you an urban scientist or an urban whore?”)
[2] And increasingly, nonfiction, as these cited articles illustrate.
[3] Kreider contributes to some of the most prestigious online publications in the English-speaking world, for which he is paid “the same amount as, if not less than, I was paid by my local alternative weekly when I sold my first piece of writing for print in 1989.”
[4] A fitting container.
[5] Word Police Division.
[6] No reason for this footnote. Move along folks, nothing here to see.
[7] Including, eventually/hopefully, in a positive way, as a catalyst to develop empathy for the socially excluded.
