I'm a dinosaur now, did you know? So I'm hatching a new egg. Er, new plan, make that.
I understand now why people retire at my age: I'm slowing down. Unfortunately, however, I find myself in the position of having to scramble again. Things cannot go on as they are. A favorite joke: "my retirement plan is to keep working." (Part of why I like it because in one sense it's funny and, in another, just a plain statement of fact.) Also unfortunately, the written word belongs in the same category as stick shifts, vinyl records, watches and film cameras—and the only thing I know how to do is write. I have no other skills that I can think of, marketable or otherwise. And from what I gather, people in my age group are not in clangorous demand by employers and recruiters.
To be blunt, things are not looking good. When people used to contact me hoping that TOP would continue, I used to say that I "intend to ride this horse all the way to the inn." Easy to be cavalier when the journey is pleasant, the weather fair!
Well, I still mean to do that, but darkness is falling and the signposts along the pathway through the woods are getting thick—and all of them say the inn is in the vicinity and I'm getting nearer to it. Patreon contributions, along with those truly generous souls who make regular contributions, are the only bright spot, a lantern in the gloom.
What to do?
I'm not a book writer. I've never written a book. On the pendulum of writerly types, I swing much closer to the social media end of the spectrum. I mean, it's not that I'm a Twitterer, firing off pithy blurts that disappear like bear farts in the mountain breeze, but I've only ever been a magazine writer and blogger—I tend toward the ephemeral and the transitory, toward small, short, throwaway pieces as opposed to ageless masterworks immortalized in ink and bound between hardcovers. But circumstances are forcing my hand. Lately, the maintenance of my person has alarmingly shifted to a deficit economy. eBay sales are all that have been stopping the leakage from my savings account. So now, the way I look at it, I have to write books. I no longer have a choice. Necessity the mother of invention and all that. When we can only do one thing, then that one thing is what we have to figure out a way to do.
The trouble, as I've alluded to several times now, is that I don't have enough writing energy to get immersed in a TOP post and a stint of book writing in the same day, day after day. One always saps strength from the other. I've tried it long enough; it's clear it's not going to work.
The big idea
So what would you think of this:
What if I were to continue working six days a week, but alternate between TOP posts and book writing? One day for the blog, one for the book. Right foot, left foot.
Here's how I envision it: TOP would update on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On the intervening days, I would devote as many hours of the morning as I could to the book project, and then, that afternoon and evening, moderate all the blog comments from the previous day.
If I can make that happen regularly, the way I picture it is that there would still be a reward for you to visit TOP every day: on alternate days you'd either have a new post or the new comments on the previous one.
I think I can
The last thing I want to do would be to alienate my Patreon supporters, which include many of you regular readers. As people stop ordering things through my Amazon and B&H links (which has already happened—too much competition from videos I guess, too few people buying cameras any more—), Patreon income and other regular contributions are keeping the blog going, and I absolutely depend on it. (I'm very grateful.)
The plan would be an experiment, I admit. It would depend on keeping things regular, and, as you know, regularity has not been S.O.P. at TOP, historically speaking. Things happen in a happy random piecemeal way on TOP, both in terms of new content and the appearance of comments. I would have to settle into more disciplined habits.
But I think I can do it. With age, after all, comes maturity, and constancy, along with experience, knowledge, probity, and all the other virtues of human elders.
Including, perhaps, a touch of obstinacy? Which might be a good thing. I'm not flying the white flag just yet.
Mike
P.S. Now I'm off to Victor to get the battery in the phone replaced. Two and a half hours in the car and who knows how long sitting at the Apple Store...without my phone to amuse me. I am not happy.... [UPDATE: It took 4 hours and 39 minutes, but I got a new battery for the iPhone 7 Plus and discovered that an iPhone 13 Pro has a screen that's virtually the same size as the one on my 7 Plus (I think a comment tipped me off to that). And, the 13 Pro Max is significantly heavier than my current phone. So when I do eventually update, it's a Pro for me, not a Pro Max.]
As a patron supporter for many years now I would be happy with one post a week. Quality not quality. You have given quality and quantity.
I am uncertain about the comment moderation as I really don’t understand how much extra work there is for you on that. It’s a pity we can’t just look after ourselves.
I think change is good. Follow your heart, yearnings and needs.
Another idea is to leave us be for an extended break and come back when you are ready.
I hope your book is a wonderful success for you.
Posted by: Len Metcalf | Thursday, 30 September 2021 at 09:07 AM
As a (among other callings) former professional technical writer, I can tell you that day-on, day-off, does NOT work. It messes with the mind and one will find oneself each morning for an hour or two saying "now then, where was I ?". Very inefficient. Might I suggest wider groupings. Something like Monday blog, Tuesday & Wednesday book, Thursday blog, Friday & Saturday book or even Monday & Tuesday blog, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday book, Saturday blog !.
Good luck with it. It will not be easy.
Posted by: Peter | Thursday, 30 September 2021 at 10:06 AM
I see you’ve gained another 19 Pareon supporters in the past 24 hours, 799 at present!
Posted by: Richard Parkin | Thursday, 30 September 2021 at 01:51 PM
I approve and will increase my Patreon
Posted by: Earl Dunbar | Thursday, 30 September 2021 at 07:10 PM
Reading the comments it seems you have shot yourself in the foot by removing the direct Amazon link, as with removing the Patreon link at the end of each post (I see Patreon numbers have gone up again to 803 this morning and more people have increased their amount). By what percentage have you increased your income after this single post mentioning Patreon? Lesson?
Having just read all the comments to date, I think the book writing will not work for profit but if you are driven to write one that is different,
It seems to me that you already have a profitable business in TOP but you do not work at making it work better for you with print sales, better links, guest posts or branching out into other areas like maybe additional pages. I also think you spend too much time on moderating the comments and selecting featured comments which could be done in other ways, say by highlighting comments in the text or replying, as you already do, to some and maybe by having people sign in to post (I don’t understand the mechanics of blogging) or having a whitelist of approved commenters to exclude the spam. KT seems to manage to have pretty instant publishing of comments without much spam getting through.
Posted by: Richard Parkin | Friday, 01 October 2021 at 03:58 AM
Mike, I sincerely hope this will work out for you, but my understanding from professional long-form writers is they need to write a specific number of words a day, every day. John Camp can speak to this much better than I can, but with all due respect, my thought is that with alternating creating content for a blog with long-form writing will be a challenge.
Here's a reference for you: https://novel.doctor/writing-words-per-day
As someone who's doing long-form writing myself (a Contributing Writer for The Absolute Sound, I've found that posting articles on audio forums is not at all the same thing as writing formal reviews for formal publication. With formal reviews, context, continuity and...flow matter a lot more, and I've found it hard to "jump" from writing "internet audio forum" content to formal print content. They are NOT the same thing. The latter is a lot harder than the former. When I'm writing a formal review for TAS, I have to turn off all possible distractions, put my nose to the grindstone, and really focus for, say, 6-8 hours at a time.
To be honest, if you need to bring in more revenue to support your business, you will be much better off with a YouTube channel. Then B&H and other photo companies can arrange to run ads in your video content. The vast majority of today's photography product consumers, folks a generation or two younger than us, are watching videos, not reading long-form printed content. That audience is where the revenue is.
Just my 2¢.
Cheers.
Posted by: Stephen Scharf | Friday, 01 October 2021 at 01:29 PM
I seem to remember two house moves ago [to the house before the one in the country] that you moved to be able to have the space to take on an assistant. I seem to remember it being the prime reason given for the need for a change of house, if not the only reason. Since then no further mention of said assistant, and another move since to the wooded hills. What happened apart from gaining the ability to move to the lakes along the way? Maybe I missed something - I was just wondering how different the story would be if etc etc...
[I made rather a botch of my life. Mere days after the first move I discovered that a married woman I had befriended and carried a torch for 20 years earlier had been divorced for seven years. We got in contact and one thing led to another. After a "long distance relationship" for a year she asked me to move to New York to be with her. I had just bought the beautiful new house in Wisconsin, and she rented an apartment in the town she lived in and wanted to leave, but she said she could not possibly leave New York: I had to be the one to move. Our deal was that we would give the relationship a trial period of a year; we weren't even going to live together during that time. However the strain of feeling responsible for me, given that she was the only person here I knew, proved too much for her, and she left me soon after I moved. Maybe it felt like more commitment than she thought she had made. I don't know, actually, you'd have to ask her. Oddly enough, when she left me, we had enjoyed a perfectly relaxed and casual weekend together, perfectly companionable, without a hint of friction much less anything resembling a fight. We only ever fought after we broke up. Half a year later she moved to California. I spent about the most miserable year of my life after we broke up, heartbroken, lonely, friendless, and miserable. I just put my head down and told myself "sometimes the only way out is through." During that winter I was so bereft of human company that I would drive the fifteen miles round trip to town just to exchange a few words with some clerk in the checkout line at the grocery store. But after a year I just decided to buck up and make the best of it.
The hidden irony of the whole saga is something you've put your finger on: in my house here in New York, the office is every bit as small as the one in my first house, the one I left in 2014 in search of a bigger office.
The in-between house had a very big office. You know what they say...oh well. --Mike]
Posted by: Andrew Sheppard | Saturday, 02 October 2021 at 04:18 PM
Mike, I will buy whatever book you write just to supplement my very modest patreon contribution. But as somebody else has told you already, you have plenty of material to make a book that all of us TOP supporters will surely buy and enjoy; just make a selection from the countless blog posts you've already written! A few edits here and there, maybe skip the camera gear posts that may feel dated, ask permission to your usual contributors (e.g., Ctein) to include also a few of their articles.
I'm enjoying a couple of Galen Rowell's books that are exactly like this, collections of his monthly Outdoor Photographer columns; there's another wildlife photographer (whose name escapes me at the moment) who has published a similar book -- collecting his articls written for OP. So why can't you do the same? Yes it will probably not fulfil your inner artist but it could probably be another revenue stream to set up.
Posted by: Alessandro Amato del Monte | Monday, 04 October 2021 at 08:45 AM
Sounds good to me, a Patreon supporter.
To echo what one or two others have said: you should mention Patreon in your posts more often and more prominently. I suspect you feel awkward doing so, but you hardly ever mention it and you should do! Very few people are going to come across it, and realise its importance, otherwise.
Posted by: Phil | Monday, 04 October 2021 at 01:09 PM
I am a big fan of yours, so for what it's worth, I agree with some of the others that books probably aren't the future. Expanding your writing to other freelance topics makes a lot more sense. I wonder about opening a portrait (or pet) studio as you used to do a bit of that - useful side gig? Beyond photography? You could get your CDL/AZ and blog from a truck? Take pictures around America etc. What about driving a school bus? It would leave some time to keep the blog going? Thought about getting your real estate license; that might be a useful side gig as well. You've got to do enough now to own/improve the house so that you can sell it when you can't do anything else. I do like that Ecuador idea too - you can blog from anywhere.
Posted by: Dale | Monday, 04 October 2021 at 10:47 PM