Blissful Motivations

A Short Thought About Writing Plus Reading the Comments

A huge big welcome to new subscribers! If you have wandered over here, unawares, you might not know that I am haphazardly blogging through my holiday. I am never an organized person at the best of times, so when removed from any semblance of routine I come all to bits. Thus it was that, because I was thinking about Shepherds for Sale, I wrote about it, and because I’m on holiday, I’m paywalling everything. I didn’t think it all the way through, as it were, and thus made someone on Twitter angry for providing an insufficient amount of free content. He observed that paywalling is “tacky” and that I am trying to manipulate the reader. He has a substack, he explained, and he doesn’t paywall. He only accepts money if people want to give it, unlike other Substackers who also only accept money if people want to give it for some extra content, for that is the good thing to do.

I was driving and didn’t see any of this until the end of the day, and being very tired, I did something I never ever do, which was to block him. Because it’s not tacky to paywall one’s deathless prose. Lots of people on Substack and Patreon do it. It isn’t “ungodly” or “manipulative.” It’s called regular life. For as long as people have produced content—that’s what I’m calling it now, Homer, Jane Austen, Shakespear, TS Elliot, Content Producers the Lot of the Them—they have gotten some money, though probably not as much as they would like or deserve, for their efforts. In fact, Charles Dickens got people to buy his books three times, once as a serial, once as a paperback, and once as a special memorial edition. Being in the same league as all those great writers (that’s a little joke) means it is perfectly fine for me to reserve some, or rather many posts for those who have the wherewithal and desire to financially support this space. It might be cast as “filthy lucre” and we’re all just “in it for the money,” but money pays for things like milk and shoes and a roof (literally in my case, by reading this blog you’re helping to pay for the roof we needed to keep the rain and snow out) and also the time that I would have had to spend earning money another way.

As I write this, I am kicking myself for sounding defensive and letting one Twitter Crank get on my nerves. Though not entirely, for I happened by an interesting post for a writer I like a whole lot who said that she had tried paywalling some posts but it was too stressful and therefore she has made all her content free. The pleasure of writing, for her, was diminished by the stress of the paywall (if I’m summarizing what she said sufficiently). As I read her post, which, as I said, I thought very well expressed and thoughtful, I suffered one of those personal revelations whereby I was reminded that writing is my bliss and being able to write as a way of earning an income rather than doing something for which I am not particularly well suited is an enormous blessing.

Which is a long way of saying

Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash

And for all you paid subscribers—a Read the Comments Episode is Below. Have a lovely day!