Good evening, readers. It’s a quiet Saturday night, and I just had a quick thought that I would like to share.
As I continue to write and build a track record, things come my way. Some are great opportunities, while others just threaten to tie up all of your spare time. I have found that I have had to pare down a few things, to get a reasonable amount of writing done. Namely, I have had to curtail opportunities that involve writing with out compensation.
Instead of doing so, I can pretty much write on here, and experience the same results. In between promoting my books, the general dryness of freelance writer opportunities has driven me to focus more on crafting stuff behind the scenes. This is why I have been doing stuff like anthologies and short stories. Those help me more at this stage in the game.
Unfortunately, this is the state of the industry , where folks want content, but don’t want it bad enough to part with coins. If you don’t watch it, your calendar will get loaded up with writing, but your PayPal will be empty AF. Ain’t no point in being broke and busy, especially with Injustice 2 dropping next week.
But, this is of no major surprise to someone like me, who focuses on continuing to build my critical, thorough going understanding of the world in which I live. I’ve been on a bookish tip lately, and it helps me to retreat from the madness and embrace the life of the mind.
One of the books I have recently started re-reading is the Communist Manifesto. Yes, I said re-read, which means I have (gasp) read it before. Its a one hundred and seventy year old book, but like it or not still relevant. One line that jumps out at me like no other at this particular moment, is the line “All that is solid melts into air.” Marx and Engels were talking about how capitalism revolutionized the productive forces by constantly innovating. Nothing was permanent.
What is “melting into air”today is very different. It is the living standards of people, the narrowing opportunities for a decent existence.. things that the last generation thought were permanent. As steady, full time work is further supplanted by the gig economy, even things like the obligatory gold watch and pension whither out of existence.
All we can do, until these things change is work to unentangle ourselves from arrangements that do not serve us. That’s a mouthfull for a Saturday night, but it is what I had on the brain.
In four days, I celebrate 8 years of Polite On Society. It all started on May 17th, 2009. This is a space which began by combining my evil political status updates, #MilitantTweets, and Facebook notes (Remember those?). Thanks for all of the support, and I intend on continuing the efforts made here. If you feel motivated to donate to help keep the site going, you can hit up the donation page. I’m not raking in that Wall Street money, folks. Just sayin.
Until the next random blog post.. Peace!
-Marc
The Literary Superpredator