I Refuse to Sell Out With My Writing

One of the most important aspects of my Writer’s Journey is to always be real and authentic with my writing. If my writing doesn’t truly reflect the person I am and it doesn’t reflect my actual voice, then I’ve failed as a writer. I refuse to let that happen.

I was reminded of this on New Year’s Eve when I received a seemingly random message on Twitter from a lady who told me she was looking for someone to do “clean writing”. She happened to see my Twitter profile and wanted to know if I was interested.

“Clean Writing” sounded boring.

And not only would it involve clean writing, but it was clean writing for a Christian, faith-based streaming service. So basically, I’d have to travel back in time 30 years or so to my church-going days and relive all of the hypocrisy and controlling, intimidating, fear-based beliefs I’d been forced into from birth until I was a young adult.

No thanks.

Still, I was polite about the entire thing. I had my doubts about the validity of the offer. It seemed far-fetched that this lady found my profile to be engaging enough to discuss a $ 4,000-a-month writing job, without making mention of reading my actual writing, or seeing how anti-organized religion I was in my writing.

Most of you have probably noticed that trend in my blogs. I’m not a fan of hypocritical, repressive religious views. Writing clean, faith-based Christian programming is something I COULD do, but why would I?

To me, it’s the same thing as taking a middle-management HR job for some boring-ass company that I have zero interest in. I do not care to be like Lumbergh’s character in Office Space, sitting around saying, “Um, yeah… Did you get the memo about the TPS reports?” for $48,000 a year.

I have better, more important shit to do.

If I wanted to have a boss telling me how to write, and what I can and cannot do in my writing, I’d just do content writing full-time. It pays more than Medium does. But I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as my blogging. Hence the reason I do it so limitedly.

Blog writing is all about ME. I get to say exactly what I feel like saying. I’m not looking over my shoulder after I publish a piece, waiting for a boss to tell me that I can’t or shouldn’t do certain things with my writing. I don’t give a fuck if somebody has a problem with it.

I’m the head honcho of The Godfather Publishing Company. I have the tall, leather chair in the biggest office in the building. Because my name is on the building. I own this bitch and everything that has to do with my own writing.

Because I believe in myself and am confident that I will eventually end up exactly where I want to be financially due to being a talented writer, it will happen. I am not about to give up the progress I’ve made during my first year because some random person wants me to do clean content writing for them.

Sure it pays more than Medium does, currently. Quite a bit more. But I’d hate having to do clean writing about faith-based topics for their streaming channel. I don’t believe in it. And I won’t do it.

If this lady eventually responds back, perhaps I’ll ask her if she has a referral she can give to me within her business contacts. For me to give up on Medium, it would require better pay than $4000 a month. It would also have to involve writing for a far cooler client that better matches up with my brand of humor and the things I am interested in.

So Ashley, if you’re out there and reading this: Do you have Seth Rogen’s contact info? Can you get me a meeting with Saturday Night Live? I’d even consider writing a weekly column for Penthouse or Hustler magazine.

Help a brother out. After all, it’s the Christian thing to do. &:^)