Here we are on Week 3 of my slow writing arc.
Remember Week 1 Slow Writing In November Instead Of NaNoWriMo?
And Week 2 Week Two Of Slow Writing? That really should have had a more descriptive title, since it deals with trying to pin down what slow writing is. But Zen tells me not to dwell on the past.
So we are moving on to Week 3, where we admit that slow writing is going to be problematic for some people, particularly those who need to generate income. To do so, I'm going to refer you to A Manifesto for Slow Writing by John Fox at BookFox.
I want to put out there that I have trouble with manifestos. They are way too doctrinaire for my tastes. It's not that I'm such a nonconforming rebel. But I can't even tolerate 90 percent of writing prompts I see, because eh, I don't want to write about that stuff. So, sure enough, I can't fall into step with some of this particular manifesto. But the first two items are definitely worth some thought. Only one of which I will address today. Because, as I said last week, I practice slow writing here by writing about small aspects of a whole, rather than force feeding everything into one long piece, overwhelming for both you and me.
Those Who Don't Have the Option of Actively Resisting
Fox says in his manifesto, "Resist the commercial pressure to pump out manuscripts at breakneck speed." He then goes on to discuss Marilynne Robinson who went twenty years between publishing two well-known books. I'm not sure that that's a good model, because most writers at some point accept that they aren't Marilynne Robinson. Fox ends this part with "Everything in the writing industry pushes the writer forward at a quicker and quicker pace, and this machinery must be actively resisted." Manifesto indeed!
This is a cry-to-arms that can only be answered by those writers who can resist because they are privileged enough either to be making decent money from their work or to not need income from it. All the other writers are dependent on the machinery to make whatever they can. Self-published writers, who aren't dependent on the writing industry, are in an even worse spot as far as being able to choose slow writing is concerned.
Self-published Book Writers and Slow Writing
A few decades ago, it wasn't unusual to read about self-published writers who were trying to pump out short novels multiple times a year. They did this because, without access to the book distribution avenues traditionally published authors had, they couldn't sell very many copies of any particular title. Many of them also weren't paying for editing, design, or professional cover illustration, the lack of which could have hampered sales as well. Since they couldn't sell many copies of any one particular title, they tried to have multiple titles available. Sales for each book multiplied by the number of books=trying to get a decent income.
I don't read about that much anymore, since the self-publishing world learned that in order to compete with traditionally published books, self-published writers would have to seek out and pay for editors, design people, illustrators, and even marketing...all the things traditionally published writers got automatically through their traditional publishers. You could say that having to do that slowed these writers down. But it was the administrative work of publishing that did it, not "slow writing."
Self-published Short-Form Writers and Slow Writing
Internet platforms like Medium and Substack provide the possibility of generating income for self-published writers of humor, essays, short stories, food writing, travel writing...you name it. They are self-publishing their work right there, though Medium includes publications that act, to some degree depending on which one you're dealing with, as gatekeepers should you want to submit to them. The income generated, though, is small. Sometimes ridiculously small. To date, I've only made fifty-five cents on Dinner at Shirley Farr's House, one of my more sophisticated pieces. (Keep in mind that there is always the possibility that I'll make a few more cents on this somewhere down the line and that if it had been published in most literary journals, I wouldn't have made anything.)
Like the self-published book-length writers in days of old, self-published writers at Medium increase their income by writing a lot. And I mean a lot. There are people there who try to write and publish every day. I know this, because one of the things many people write about is publishing on Medium. One woman wrote an article about the month she published as many stories there as I had in over three years. How-to articles are popular at Medium, especially articles on how to publish on Medium. A particularly interesting one was by a fellow who explained he spent three hours per article, which included Internet research and writing. There have been articles from writers complaining that some editors of publications don't respond the same day they submit. These writers have publishing schedules!
At Medium you get paid a tiny amount for each reader you attract to a story. You may not have attracted a lot of readers for each piece you published this month, but if you published thirty pieces at a small number of readers per piece, you might be able to get some kind of payday for your effort. Additionally, if you publish a lot, some magic algorithm thing might happen and you could have your work promoted, that could attract followers, if you build up a few thousand followers those people will be seeing your work regularly and if a certain percentage of them read it...income!
Does this kind of rapid writing produce stellar results? Would slowing down maybe enhance things? Let's not go there.
My point, as I did state at the beginning, is that slow writing, which appears to be mainly a lifestyle not a true method of working, is going to be a hard sell for those writers who really need to sell regularly.
