I'm having coffee in an alien mug. (read: Ikea)
At a stranger's table. Watching an unfamiliar view. Trying to decide who I want to be today.
Am I a woman who tinfoils her already-scorched skin on the beach, to get a nice juicy roast? Am I someone who loses herself to the Gothic Quarter?
Probably number two.
But as I sit in my borrowed chair with my unfamiliar mug, I'm allowed a reset. A do-over. I get to reassess the thought patterns that are keeping me down, and this time it concerns you.
Taking advantage of this little breather before the day gets rolling, I went onto Medium to try and peddle one of a trove of stories and poems. Writing on Medium used to be a lot of fun. I had the most fun writing this. And this. Luckily, I wrote them before I had a chance to make money on the platform, else they might've never got written.
As soon as you learn the rules of this Internet money, that's the moment you lose your artistic innocence. I remember conversations with one of the guys publishing my stuff, after I'd started getting paid. Reconsidering my words, something I never used to.
Do I really want to say "nipple" here when it goes against community rules? It didn't mean my post would get banned or anything. It ended up being a terrific write-up even without nipples. Keeping the nip just meant I'd lose the chance for it to get boosted, which is the only way to make real money on Medium.
Gradually, I started making little tweaks. Taking out small obscenities and profanities that, while not strictly necessary, lent my writing a certain flavor. Reading back on latter posts, I still sound like myself. Only less.
So going on Medium now to pick a story to send out into the world, I stumble on a dark horse. Or perhaps just a black sheep.
It's a story I wrote recently, with no publication thought in mind. It just flowed. Sometimes, words just start forming inside my head, and I gotta sit down and write them or lose them forever. It's not a clean story. It's not a particularly nice story.
Yet, at second read, it's better than what I've written in months.
Dare say it's better than the strictly-for-publication stuff I've got lined up. Because it doesn't play by the rules. Because it speaks all them dirty words we're supposed to hide under our beds. Because it's best read by night.
Now I'm thinking what to do with it. My aline coffee and simple chair allow me to revisit my writing perspective with new eyes. It's so easy falling into money-making patterns, even if it's invisibile money like on here. And once you learn how to rig the game, the temptation is endless.
It's not hard, rigging the game. And by that, I mean on Hive. And Medium. But I gotta keep it personal somehow, right? It's easy enough that, if you pay a little attention, you learn what kind of topics are likelier to get good payouts. What aren't. What curators care about, what communities are more promising (to you, in terms of making the mullah).
It's easy to lose your soul and forget it's all make-believe. I think what saved me with Hive was the long period when it didn't mean dirt. It was just imaginary money, after that spike in 2017 (?). Or 2016. I don't remember I had growing up to do. But that, whenever that was, was followed by years of not even opening the markets.
It meant I could hone a style and write for the heck of it. It means that even though I could, presumably, rig the game in my favor, I have no interest or inclination to. Because it becomes joyless. Like my little Medium journey, it loses that certain patois that marks it as hailing specifically from my soul essence and not anyone else's. And I can't be having that.
The moment you start thinking of it as real money you stand to lose, you lose the creative freedom and that's too pricey for me.
I've decided to publish my Medium story, though have yet to decide where. Whether on my own blog, or if I'll try to shelter it inside some alt community somewhere.
It'd be much easier to scrap it if it wasn't written so good. But then again, who's making up these bullshit rules, anyway? And why should my fucking be any more vile and repulsive than other people blatantly trying to rig the system in their favor?
Life's too short to take the nipples outta your writing.
