Writing is for Suckers

Aeon magazine, a publication about which I know nothing, published a long-form article by computer programmer-cum-writer, James Somers, called "Are coders worth it?" In it, he describes an internal struggle with vocation and personal worth. Somers says that the convergence of proliferating start-up web companies and the scarcity of web developers have created a phenomenon that is quickly inflating the egos of he and his fellow young coders. They're making silly money, working mostly-easy hours, offered outrageous benefits, and they have a god complex to top it all off. Or, maybe, all of that occupational luxury is helping to contribute to the god complex. Either way, his article is a confessional in which he says that when it comes down to it, he is nothing more than a plumber for a user’s website experience. 

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the important thing to understand is that I am merely a user of this thing. I didn’t make it. I just read the instruction manual. In fact, I’m especially coveted in the job market because I read the instruction manual particularly carefully. Because I’m assiduous and patient with instruction manuals in general. But that’s all there is to it.

Of course, I’m burying the lede here because what I’m really enthralled by is that this is another lamentation on the death of the professional writer. Somers' real passion is writing and he yearns for a big mag to buy his pièce de résistance profile of Douglas Hofstadter for 20 grand. And, I ask, but what then? Will he finally be a real writer? A validated one?

Another related thread that I’ve been following is this unintentional discouragement for anyone looking to enter the trade of putting words on paper for public consumption. ThinkProgress’ Allysa Rosenberg wrote a tip string on Twitter entitled: On the logistics of becoming a writer, explaining how she got a sweet paid gig. It only took an output mandate of “three posts a day” and emailing herself topics for future material while working a zombifying day job. On the more dour end, this blogger gloriously says that anyone who wants to make it as a professional writer should just give up now. There’s no money in it and you’re not any good, anyway. These are the words that keep me from posting here (and I’m not even getting paid to do this! Hell, I’m so gun-shy I don’t even want to go public with my thoughts!).

A taste:

In the time it took you to read the last paragraph some 48-year old was laid off by The Village Voice, and they're smarter than you and have lived ten times what you've lived and can write so much better than you I actually almost feel bad for you, and now they're on the same job market trying to scramble for the same shitty 10-cents-a-word gig recapping a show about couponing for the AV Club in the hopes that they can bang out some soul-destroying tedious bullshit so that a pack of talentless losers in the comments can pick their words apart from the safety of their beige plastic cubicles as they try to distract themselves with pop culture for long enough to keep their all-devouring self-hatred at bay.

Soul-crushing, really.

Let it be a lesson to all of us. Don't put so much time into that 7,000 word essay that you want Esquire to buy. Unless your name's Michael Lewis, it ain't happening.