Literally the only benefit that has accrued to me over 30 years of writing in public has been the occasional note I received from someone telling me that something I wrote was meaningful to them.

Reply to Literally the only benefit that has accrued to me over 30 years of writing in public has been the occasional note I received from someone telling me that something I wrote was meaningful to them. on Fri, 04 Sep 2026 05:28:58 GMT

margaretsefton@writing.exchange — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 05:28:58 GMT

@jalefkowit I remember running a book discussion group on a platform called shelfari, which doesn't exist now thank you, Amazon. We were discussing We Are Iran, and trying to communicate with participants there. Their access was touch and go, and then we didn't hear from them at all. Could we go to that dark place. I don't place it beyond the realm of the possible. A total internet shutdown may not be possible, but a major disruption could happen if the gov't declares a state of emergency.

Reply to Literally the only benefit that has accrued to me over 30 years of writing in public has been the occasional note I received from someone telling me that something I wrote was meaningful to them. on Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:46:19 GMT

robpike@cosocial.ca — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:46:19 GMT

@jalefkowit One of the happiest moments I've had recently was receiving a warm thank you email from someone I had complimented, also by email, for a superbly written blog post.

Reply to Literally the only benefit that has accrued to me over 30 years of writing in public has been the occasional note I received from someone telling me that something I wrote was meaningful to them. on Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:44:26 GMT

margaretsefton@writing.exchange — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:44:26 GMT

@jalefkowit Well, there is a lot to producing for its own sake, and publishing, that may be beneficial if not narrowly profitable. Me, personally, I think it's unrealistic to try to produce for a market in the traditional way. And besides, who knows that the world won't go back to traditional publishing and we'll all need to go get those annual volumes to research book and journal publishers. I mean, will we always have the internet. Will we in America always have this freedom.

Reply to Literally the only benefit that has accrued to me over 30 years of writing in public has been the occasional note I received from someone telling me that something I wrote was meaningful to them. on Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:34:51 GMT

mmiasma@mastodon.sdf.org — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:34:51 GMT

@jalefkowit

Unread pages in a drawer has a lot of symbolism attached to it. Very sad symbolism.

Reply to Literally the only benefit that has accrued to me over 30 years of writing in public has been the occasional note I received from someone telling me that something I wrote was meaningful to them. on Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:33:04 GMT

margaretsefton@writing.exchange — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:33:04 GMT

@jalefkowit

Reply to Literally the only benefit that has accrued to me over 30 years of writing in public has been the occasional note I received from someone telling me that something I wrote was meaningful to them. on Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:12:20 GMT

jalefkowit@hachyderm.io — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:12:20 GMT

Like me, my mother was a writer her whole life. Also like me, she never wrote because she saw some profit in it. We both wrote for the same reason: because we couldn't _not_ write.

But unlike me, she did her writing in the age before the internet, when to get your writing in front of other people you had to run a gauntlet of editors and publishers. The rejections eventually wore her out. So she would write things, plays and poems and short stories, and then file the neatly typewritten pages away in a drawer. I may be the only person who ever read them. They were good; better than anything I have ever written.

The internet came along when I was a young man, and I thought: if I'm going to write, this is the place where I will do it. Here there are no gatekeepers you have to flatter. There's also no guaranteed audience, but at least you don't need someone else's permission.

This has turned out to be a ludicrously unprofitable decision. I never made a penny, never found that audience. But I do have evidence I at least reached a few people, which I suppose beats putting the pages in a drawer.

Reply to Literally the only benefit that has accrued to me over 30 years of writing in public has been the occasional note I received from someone telling me that something I wrote was meaningful to them. on Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:01:22 GMT

nicelymanifest@mastodon.social — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:01:22 GMT

@jalefkowit Flooded wherever you look with streamed and other data, most just stop knowing who supplies what they 'consume' to the point where a tick-like is about the limit for most people.

I post a lot here but very rarely ever trigger textual responses.

Never ending reasons for moving as many people off tech as possible.

Reply to Literally the only benefit that has accrued to me over 30 years of writing in public has been the occasional note I received from someone telling me that something I wrote was meaningful to them. on Thu, 03 Sep 2026 15:58:09 GMT

jalefkowit@hachyderm.io — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 15:58:09 GMT

All we have is each other
And the songs we share

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dmiODU2DNg