Now we got it, now that it's gone: Writing was essentially an art supported by the generous patronage of appreciative deep pockets. Over the decades, we writers had all sort of Medici-like patrons. Those have included:
- Academic appointments. We taught a few courses in return for a stipend to write our own stuff.
- BigMedia made us BigNames. That gave us the platform to make enough money to experiment with doing something seminal.
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BigPR had us penning press releases and ghostwriting opinion-editorials. That was plenty to support many a winter, spring, summer and fall in New England writing provocative essays which no more than 500 folks would read.
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Foundations provided fellowships. That bought us a few months or so to do something serious.
Currently, though, most of the Medici types have their own economic problems as well as reform preoccupations, e.g. standardizing how businesses present their financial data, ending M2M. So, what do we writers do in this post-patronage age? Heck, even those heavies who supply VANITY FAIR with snippets of insight and high dosages of gossip could be stranded out here, sans guaranteed income.
The answer, and it's not a happy state of affairs, is that we have to remake ourselves as commercial beings. In MARKET WATCH, Todd Harrison tells global movers and shakers, "Most companies must reinvent themselves if they hope to find their ways to better days." At the top of the list of Harrison's suggestions is that they find a niche or more. Forget being "the so-called 'Jacks-of-all-trades.'"
I bumped into that reality around the turn of the century. Therefore, I have had the advantage of time to experiment with approaches to a writer's re-do. Harrison is right on the money. It's all about niche.
After plenty of false starts, I discovered the niche of legal writing, everything from blogging on regulatory and litigation issues to ghostwriting closing arguments for trials. In late 2005 and early 2006, I even invested four months of my own time commuting across the border from central Connecticut to Rhode Island. There I live-blogged what turned out to be a landmark trial: Lead paint public nuisance. The $10,000 loan I arranged via my credit card to facilitate that has long been paid off.
Those are the kinds of inputs/risks we gotta take in order to subsidize our art of writing. The road less traveled is the only road to making a living these days. Why the Millennials at Mediabistro.com haven't recognized that is a puzzle. They are still earnestly seeking information from each other on bulletin boards about how to prepare a pitch for a freelance article for FAMILY CIRCLE. Cute, but a waste of precious time that has to be focused on carving out a viable commercial niche.
For those ready to accept what is, here is my tale of my own remake Download Geezerguts.
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