I remember when I tried to get a job at one of those online content-mills. Wow, was I floored when they rejected my work. After calming down and reading what I submitted, I had no choice left but to laugh my head off: I laughed for a good two or three minutes. The article I submitted was simultaneously the worst and funnies thing I had read in a long time.
That article was called, “The life-cycle of a Housefly.” A topic assigned to me by the content-mill, and one I would not dream up in a million years. My favorite part, upon perusing my rejected masterpiece, and the thing that kept me laughing, was this tasty description of houseflies:
“They are quick. They are annoying. They land on our food and throw up.”
I can’t believe I wrote that! I laughed so hard tears rolled down my cheeks. That article was terrible, and I know why. It was all my fault. I committed a sin especially poignant for writers. I tried to squeeze into a mold, a prefab world, and there I made a prefab thing. Trying to do the same thing everyone else is doing is a writer’s death, and it’s a lesson writers are occasionally reminded of. I realized I was out of practice and needed to brush-up.
Over the months, I have also thought about the prolific growth of writers on the Internet. Where did they all come from? Twenty years ago, I was one of a handful of writers in a large Southeastern United States metropolis. Ten years ago, I was still only one of a handful of writers. It was not until the Internet opened the doors of publication to people all over the world that writers became common. Continue reading Text Motif: The Tao of Writing
