Writing is a bad business and good writing is a worse one. Bad businesses that are fun are called hobbies, but there is an inherent unseriousness to hobbies. I was trying to think of a better word for a person who pursues a bad business seriously, but my mind only came up with a series of derogatory terms before I stopped—pulled the brakes. Right then it hit me: the word I was looking for already exists—it was in front of me all along. The word is writer.
After calling myself a writer for a year, I have learned that there is no glory in it—the title does not make women swoon. Instead, they tilt their heads, close one of their eyes, nod a little, and say: “That’s cool.” Once you get to know them better, they’ll eventually ask: “So, what do you really do?” All of this leads me to believe that they were not asking about how I spend my time but how I make money, in which case for the last year I should have been answering: “I don’t.”
Since writing is a bad business that I am serious about, I will continue to call myself a writer, even if it is not my main source of income. However, I have decided that there are two prerequisites to this right.
The first is that I will not try too hard to earn a living from writing. Though as of now there is nothing I would prefer to do, the financial burden is both stressful and limiting. The humanities are full of good businessmen who forgot that they signed up for bad business. I want to write freely.
The second is that I will only ever write for three people: my uncle, a girl I like, and myself. For my uncle, I will publish essays about art, culture, and technology; for the girl, I will publish stories; for myself, I will publish random—hopefully at times humorous—musings.
The internet is a big place without walls, and the mistake people make is to treat everyone who arrives at their door as one of their guests, even though they often fail to fulfill the politeness, curiosity, and open-mindedness expected of a visitor. Choosing to write for a small number of specific people is my attempt to avoid pandering to bad guests. I want to write about subjects I talk about with my friends without being too afraid of political correctness or social taboos.
If you are similar to any one of these three people, I hope you’ll stick around. My goal is to become a friend to my readers over time, and when you receive this newsletter I want it to feel like an actual correspondence with someone you know and find interesting. For that reason, I’m going to encourage long-form responses to certain essays as well as host in-person events once I return to New York in August.
So, welcome :)
love it!