Here's To Vocal In 2024

So, what are my aspirations as a creator on Vocal in 2024? I continue to read that sentence over and over again, and I want to repeatedly bang my head on a concrete wall. Of course, I'm not going to do that; I actually am a decent-looking human, at least my wife tells me from time to time, and in doing so will ultimately not be favorable for me, much like my Vocal "career" thus far.

Okay, so a little backstory on my own, self-made, frustrations. I have been on Vocal since 2021. I found Vocal on a random doom-scrolling session when I couldn't sleep and Facebook was the best thing to pass time until I eventually passed out. I was already looking for ways to promote my writing in some capacity. Medium kept popping up, but after looking at past posts done by both sides, I chose Vocal. It seemed like a user-friendly webpage to navigate and publish work. I also chose Vocal for the chance to win writing challenges. At the time, 2021, I had completed work on my novel (I'll come back to that later), I had re-lit this oil lantern of "dreaming to be a writer" within me that died some time prior. I, like many, pushed through a regular 9-to-5 and longed for something different, hence the novel. But I wasn't pushing out writing samples, blogs, stories, or even small social media posts like I should have been doing. Vocal was a tool that I just ignored. Shame on me.

More backstory.

For the longest time, I have always wanted to be an accomplished writer above all of my other dreams as a kid. Above being a professional baseball player, a rockstar, a business owner, and a scientist, I wanted to be a writer. I loved telling stories. I loved the idea of coming up with drama and a passion for world-building. This started at fourteen, in the 1990s, when I discovered a wonderful and frustrating game called Dungeons and Dragons. It allowed me a way to be creative, and thus, my journey to be a writer and author began. Fast forward twenty-seven years, and I pretty much did everything else but follow my passion. Quite literally. I was in the military, worked for many different government agencies and businesses, got married, had kids, and currently hate my day job. But, one afternoon in 2017, I turned to my then-fiance and told her I wanted to pursue this dream. This wonderful and amazing thing called writing. I figured people used to say that I had a knack for storytelling; some old college creative writing professor once told me that I should consider writing as a career path; why not? So, I sat in front of my old laptop and started compiling a story. A novel. A fantasy novel. One that I finished, sent to many publishers, received every single type of denial letter, then tucked it away for a while, then reopened for NaNoWriMo in 2023, and quickly discovered that I indeed sucked as a writer. Or at least I was beating myself up to the point that I wanted to delete everything I ever wrote.

Deep breath.

I can now say that I have grown and learned some things to take my eighty-seven thousand-plus word novel and publish it myself. But, in 2021, enter my Vocal Plus subscription. You see, I needed some validation during this struggle about writing. I needed some proof that I could do this. I needed something in the form of likes, reads, shares, or subs. I needed something. What I found were the writing challenges. Each one was unique. They had max word counts, they had poetry, they had opinions, fiction, non-fiction, and they had cash prizes. That is what I was looking for. I needed validation in the form of money. With thirty days or less to start, edit, and complete a single challenge, I figured I could sharpen my skills and maybe get paid for it too. Let me tell you the crumbling depression of defeat when a story you believe was not bad only gets one read. And that one read is probably not even a read; it's probably the challenge judge opening the story to graze through it only to close it and whisper hateful things to the computer screen, but I digress.

I wasn't using Vocal to its full potential. I was just trying to win money. Which isn't bad, and the challenges are actually fun. Stressful, but fun. But the money I am spending for an account with Vocal isn't equal to the number of "published works" I can use as a platform. And yes, I am fully aware of some authors who allegedly have been accused of getting paid clicks for the possibility of a greater chance at winning and, of course, some authors who were accused of using AI to write a narrative. Couple that with people saying Vocal is a massive popularity platform for writers and I can ultimately convince myself to leave Vocal all together. However, if we remove all that and focus on the skeleton of what I think Vocal.media is supposed to be, we have what I think I should do for 2024 through this platform.

I need to expand more than just the challenges. I don't think I'll ever win a challenge, to be honest. It doesn't mean I won't attempt them. Still, I just don't know how I stack against others to even be a competitor when sometimes it feels like the winner is randomly chosen. That means I need to venture out and start publishing more short stories, series work, opinion articles, product reviews, podcast reviews, and take advantage of the ability to have a published piece that may or may not develop into something more significant. I have heard of others getting larger gigs from their Vocal work, so it is not farfetched. I need to look at what others are doing to make publishing on Vocal profitable but not take away from creativity. It will take effort, but I need to be more engaging. I can forward my links to my stories all day, but no one cares unless they care about me. So, that means I need to market myself more through Vocal. If I want to make this side hustle that one day may turn into a career, I must commit to a sustainable marketing strategy. Yes, it still stings to see only one read on a story I felt was at least "honorable mention" worthy, but if I'm going to claim the rest of my life as a writer, then I need to put the work in and use what Vocal has to offer and see what happens.

Because I AM a writer.

Here's to 2024 on Vocal. Cheers, and happy writing.