Are Good Writers Obsolete?

I’m discouraged.

 

Close to terminally discouraged…

 

THE GENERAL CHALLENGE:

 

Too few people read anymore. (Asking for a friend: How many books have you read so far this year? I’ve read too many to even remember them all. I love to read. I’ve lived a thousand lives because I’m a voracious reader.)

 

According to a Jenkins Group study, here are the appalling statistics:

• Fully one-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives

• 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college

• 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year

• 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years

• 57 percent of new books aren’t read to completion

 

Part of the reason, I suspect, is because most school textbooks are boring as hell. Unless children are exposed early on to Scholastic book catalogs or book fairs, they’ve never been introduced to books that aren’t insufferably pedantic. Without Scholastic books as a youngster, I might have become one of the people who don’t read anymore. And my life would have been over long ago. (I simply wouldn’t elect to live an intellectually  impoverished life for decades.)

 

I ask myself, what’s the difference between “can’t read” and “won’t read”? 

Here it is: People who can’t read realize what they’re missing and wish they could.

People who don’t read are choosing to intellectually restrict their available literary adventures. They’re cocooned in their own little intrigues, self-satisfied and insulated against what’s happening, and what’s been happening, since long before they were born. 

They’re uninformed citizens and yawn-inducing conversationalists.

Sadly, they often vote against their own best interests because they can’t tell the difference between what their so-called representatives are saying with their mouths as opposed to what they’re doing with their actual votes.

(Translation: they’re getting screwed over!!!)

(Telling people what they want to hear and then doing the opposite is many a politician’s stock in trade.)

 

It’s perhaps inviting to join them–to just clock out of swirling humanity (and animal-ity)–but their lives are shallow; the things they talk about are superficial , usually unbearably dull, and filled with opinions that they adopted from other equally-misinformed people.  They want to be entertained in silly ways, and they want their opinions embraced and spread by their audiences without question or comment.

 

Life is a serious matter. Frivolity and superficial conversations don’t float my boat. I need my mind to be stimulated and exercised: I get easily bored, even depressed, when it isn’t. My brain is my superpower, for as long as it lasts… and as long as I use it and don’t get hit in the head, it should last my entire lifetime because I read and I write and I engage in life in elemental ways that most people would probably find outside their comfort zones.

 

MY PROFESSIONAL CHALLENGE:

 

And then there are the people looking for professional writers, people who, too, have only infrequently (if ever) read another book after high school or college. Because they think so rarely of the value of books or carefully-crafted words or writers, they expect what we do to be worth piddling little to them…

 

Well, it’s true, based on the project descriptions and established budgets I read on every freelance portal I visit!!!!

 

So, too few people who are looking for good writers are willing to pay what good writing is worth, or they don’t know what good writing even is, so they settle for mediocre figuring, “If it’s properly and pleasantly written, it’s good enough…”

 

No, it isn’t. Unless it’s powerfully written, people who aren’t in the habit of reading won’t even bother to stick around to see if you can solve their problem!

 

I’m so tired of company heads and entrepreneurs accepting “good enough” for the pitiful amounts they’re willing to pay.

 

I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of businesses are struggling because they think their website copy and other outreach materials are “good enough” when they could be so much better: more engaging, more activating, more alive and beckoning.

 

I look for work every day, only to see potential customers who want exemplary writing at sweatshop prices. They want intensively researched 2500-word pieces for the price of about four lattes!!! (Think I’m kidding? Take a look yourself at freelance portals and weep!)

 

It’s exasperating!!!

 

They wouldn’t research and write it for that–because they consider their time far more valuable than that–but they want some other poor schmuck (who will remain poor at those prices) to take it on!

 

Not this kid. I’m a professional. I’m not going to work fast and furiously to meet some skinflint’s anemic budget. I’ll freaking retire before I’ll do that!

 

Luckily, I have one client who insisted I raise my rates to above $100/hour, even for editing or enhancing existing copy and content. Why? Because my stuff is worth it. (True, my client is a big corporation. They know what great copy and content are worth to them; they know the ROI on whatever I do for them will make them smile.)

 

I’ve invested decades learning my craft. I’m no less worthy of being well paid than any other professional who has invested decades honing their skill set, from attorneys to doctors to you-name-it. The VALUE of what I do far exceeds the cost of enlisting me to do it.

 

I hate to see good writers being squeezed out of their livelihoods simply because employers don’t know enough about great writing to pay adequately to have it done for them.

 

I’m sickened by the sheer ignorance of so many employers.

 

It’s either ignorance or greed.  Maybe it’s greed. I hope not. But it probably is, for a significant percentage of them. Ignorance is curable. Sadly, greed is not.

 

Whatever it is, I’m tired of this battle. It shouldn’t be this hard to find people willing to pay adequately for what I do.

 

Period.