8 Lessons from a 3-Figure Writer

It’s already tomorrow somewhere in the world. Maybe that’s why the future feels like it is already here. Do you have questions about the future? Who doesn’t, right? The future is big and scary and always seemingly just out of reach. Then suddenly before you know it you are there, and it’s the present and then not a shortest measurable moment of time later it’s the past already. WTF? That sure was fast. But the future is still out there staring you in the face, laughing at you, calling you a big baby and asking you what’s taking so long. F-you future is what I always say.

When I first came on the scene, everyone thought I was a hack. Nobody ever read my work much less attempted to talk to me. That was probably smart. I am not much of a thinker, a fairly terrible writer, and an overall shitty person. I also happen to have made $4.07 writing.

Future me and present day me have been chatting a lot these days. Thanks to the time difference, future me comes into our discussions fresh out of lockup and full of energy. I’m often blinking away the afternoon hangover and wondering if my vodka is chilled yet. Still, I’m learning.

Did that make any sense at all? The whole tomorrow is the future and I am meeting my future self for advice on writing? No? Never forget I am a terrible writer. I am just gonna drop the whole talking to my future self bullshit and dish out some free advice from present day self.

I guess.

When You Make No Money, People Still Want To Take What Little Money You Do Have

It’s Fucked Up Isn’t It? But So Very True

Sales guys, marketing guys, lawyers, accountants, web designers, regular designers, course creators, and personal brands all avoid me or come to me regularly with various bills they claim I owe for services rendered. Guess whose money they want to take? Hint: It is mine.

When you are deadbeat, everyone wants a piece of you. With every new relationship, I have to wonder if a person wants to work with me or want me to pay them the money they claim I owe them. It’s really fuckin sad. I am sure you are already well aware of this if you are poor.

The More You Write, The Same You Make

Quantity is not the way to make money as a writer, if you suck at writing. It is a way, though. Quality is subjective. I have always thought that the best way to grow my audience was to stop trying to write things that people want to read but instead focus on making them uncomfortable, and to do this as often as I could. This strategy has failed spectacularly. My alternate strategy to write articles that no one will ever notice has, on the other hand, been going gangbusters.

I write like a freak of nature: Two whole days per week, the authorities lock me away, and I still shit out five to eight blog posts. At one point I was crapping out five or six a day. This process has led to on average a new blog post every day for four years. Exactly 1898 blog posts. And, oh yeah, Medium suspended my account (update: twice) for almost an entire year (update: 2 years) for a rules violation (update: multiple violations). I can’t recall exactly the details, but it was nothing at all like what I am doing in this article, nothing at all.

Do you have to write this way? No. I can’t either.

The more you write, the better you get, sounds like good advice. So does, the better you get, the more you make. But, in reality this only applies to writers who do not suck aka not me, and likely not you. Don’t get precious about this. If volume writing is good enough for Lousia May Alcott, it’s good enough for you, but let’s be honest you are no fucking Lousia May Alcott, not even close.

You Don’t Have to Be Autistic to Be a Writer

But it Sure Helps

I know what everybody says. You can’t be a successful writer unless you fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. This is simply not true. Writing can be autistic, but it is also a means of expressing yourself as a normal person.

Writing is as basic a human function as speaking. Autism is a a developmental disorder of variable severity that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior. Better, you can take the time to arrange your thoughts and words to form an argument. It might seem autistic but it is not, unless it is, in which case sweet, you have autism, and are therefore probably a very good writer, though probably not a big hit with the ladies or fellas.

I recently wrote a humor piece about the world’s top microorganisms gathering to band together to try and stop SARS CoV-2. This is not something any artist or autistic or sane person would ever write about (or care about). Judging by the story stats it is also something nobody would ever care to read about. I happened to think it was pretty damn funny. Then again, I am a nerd.

You don’t need to know a billion vocabulary words or be schooled in literature to write something interesting. Write about what you care about or don’t, I don’t give a fuck what you write about to be honest, but learn to do it in a way that makes other people uncomfortable.

Know When to Give Up

I have no superpowers, unless you count the power to annoy as a superpower in which case I do have a superpower. You can’t tell me anything I don’t know, because I know everything already so don’t bother trying. I will always respond with “I already know everything about that, so piss off dickweed. ”

This enables me to give answers without even trying. Because people are always running away from me or running toward me (remember, I typically owe them a shit ton of money), they will tell me to fuck off. Taking all this abuse allows me to reach superhuman levels of irritation and sadness. I could never reach this level if I did not already know everything.

Put down your ego and throw in the towel. Just quit, game over, done. That’s the whole point of meeting new people in the first place.

The Further You Spread Your Butt Cheeks, the More Turd Will Come Out

Although I am no A-list celebrity or even a D-list celebrity or even a known weirdo, I experience some of the same effects, mostly the massively inflated ego and sense of self worth. It’s easy to feel like you “know” celebrities. In reality, you don’t give a shit about them and they give an even smaller shit about you.

This is a consequence of becoming a public figure of any level. The wider you spread your butt cheeks the more tempting it is for people to poke it. You can never make everyone understand you, hell you don’t even understand you, but your work pretty much blows in any case.

A Creative Partnership Is Always Fluid or Sometimes Solid, or Gas, or Plasma, Definitely one of the Forms of Matter

Don’t be a douche. Learn, grow, talk, and most importantly — figure out how you can subjugate the people you work with.

Empathy Is a Good Business Strategy But a Terrible Way to End an Article

I make well below the average writer on Medium and Vocal because each time I sit down to write, I ask this question: “What will annoy and confuse my reader’s and Medium and Vocal? What will make them the most uncomfortable?”

I don’t ever gut hung up on what I want to write, I just write whatever batshit crazy thing pops into my head at any given moment. The best strategy for getting a cut of any business is to grow that business, or to rob it.

A final thought. When in doubt, fuck off.

Some asshole tried to tell me how much money he had in his bank account during our very first conversation. Even though I was impressed by the amount I still told him to fuck off.

There are plenty of ways to make money, and I suck at all of them. Still, I choose to wake up and write for some unfuckin known reason. At least I don’t take notes on what I see and share that with the world like some asshole.

When All Else Fails — Listicles

Never fuckin fails….never.