Cash money writing

Creative practice under capitalism

Haters love to call me a grifter. Despite the huge amount of writing I do for free on my substack and instagram, the huge amount of free Fucking Cancelled episodes, and the fact that the subscriptions to both this substack and the Fucking Cancelled one are cheap, haters characterize me as a money hungry grifter putting out empty / shallow work for cash.

I have lived off my work for around 7 years which is fucking crazy. Which is something I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams. The fact that I get to do this work as my full time job is a blessing beyond words and the thing I have fought harder for than anything else in my life.

Work/life balance? Lol. I don’t even know what that means. What is my “work” and what is my “life”? The idea of dividing work from life based on what I’m paid for is so bizarre to me. It has always been bizarre to me, even when I was foodbank poor. My work has always been to think and feel and try to understand as deeply as possible, to face the things I am forbidden to even acknowledge, to tell the truth, to get at the thing beneath, to change myself, to change the reader, to change the world. Humble little ambitions that have nothing to do with money. My work. In some form or another it has always been my work. And my most consistent form, the most authentic expression of this calling: writing.

The idea that it’s a grift is so absurd to me and betrays this heartbreaking longing in the accuser. Can you imagine doing something for real? Can you imagine telling the truth at all costs? Can you imagine ambition other than fame and fortune? Are we all so alienated that the artist herself has become suspect? In the post-reality, post-literacy landscape I am only intelligible as an “influencer;” my work can only be understood as “content.” What have we lost?

I don’t make zines as a nostalgic gesture to something I saw once on tv. I still remember the pre-internet world and the first zines I read and wrote were from that world. There’s a reason I still make my zines the old fashioned way without formatting it using software: because I don’t need to. I already have a way to make zines. I use scissors and glue and lay out the pages in a particular pattern. This matters. This is not “content.” We can create human culture and discourse because it is a human thing to do. A thing we must do. A thing we really badly deeply long to do. We can do it because on that level, if we want to be, we really are free.

For most of my life and most of my writing, my writing has been separate from “how I got money / met my basic needs.” I wrote anyway. The writing and the publishing were actually needs that I had. Fundamental needs that I always found ways to meet even when I was extremely poor. Just like I found ways to survive even when I was unable to maintain “normal” jobs. It is only in the last seven or so years that my writing has been the way I make money. And, shockingly, the last seven years are also the first time in my adult life that I am not poor, I make enough off my work to not only survive but to not worry (much) about money. That’s a kind of life I didn’t expect at all, let alone through the risky choice of “zinester and online writer” as a job. So I am humbled and grateful, for my readers, for those who pay me for this work and let me do it as my real full time job while also not being poor. It really means everything to me.

I also feel the claws of capital in my practice and it makes me sick. I try really hard to ignore any and all advice about marketing, branding, or audience in my writing. My writing is a place where I am free. Real work doesn’t come from treating the writing as a commodity. It’s not about what will do the best in the market. It’s about the ideas that are trying to be expressed through me and doing my very best to give them voice. It’s about creating enough space for something new to come through. Much of it is very unstructured and it may appear that very little is happening. A good and juicy practice can feel like a secret conversation with the world, a place to go deep into something and see.

There are shorter pieces that go into an idea, spend a little time there, the end. Then there are longer pieces like books that get to spend more time and therefore come at the thing in so many more ways. Books are luxurious. Books are resource intensive. Books are secretive and private because they are unfolding. I have a few books in me, some are collections of shorter pieces, like most of my work, that just need some rewriting / editing. One is a book I want to write, based on an essay of the same name. It has been so long since I have written a book “from scratch.” I’ve only done it once actually (The Size of a Bird). This book-idea is called The ontology of pussy. It is a book about surviving incest, domestic violence and rape, lichen sclerosis (a chronic, inflammatory, autoimmune skin condition of the vulva), polyamory, falling in love as a survivor, extremely hot sex, becoming une femme fontaine (a squirter), and the transformative, healing power of pleasure. Chronic illness / survivor memoir meets x-rated highkey romantic love story meets self liberation through sexual pleasure as told through the embodied experience of discovering new sexual capacities in my late 30s. I want to write this book. I know in order to write it I need to go into a specific energetic space — I need to turn toward it completely. I need time.

Yet there is so much other shit I have to do all the time! The truth is shorter pieces that I release regularly make me the money I need to live my life. But they also direct and shape my creative energy a certain way. I am always trying to reach a place where I consistently have so much creative energy that I can work on a longer project while simultaneously writing a lot of shorter pieces. Sometimes it’s hard to do both. I’m thinking of sharing some of that writing here and paywalling it, as a way to finance the time to work on this project. I also really thank those of you who don’t see this subscription as transactional, but as supporting my overall creative/political practice which allows me to do better and more work over all.

These negotiations feel crazy. Selling my creative practice feels crazy. I love (and need) the support, but I don’t want it to shape the direction of the work. I feel very protective of the direction of the work. I feel it is necessary for all artists to follow their creative and political intuition even when that is unpopular. Our job is not to be popular. It will flatten culture if artists only respond to the demands of the audience. Our job is to transform the audience. The audience won’t be transformed by getting exactly what they asked for. The artist must be fundamentally free, which means she must be supported through the ebbs, flows, and variations in her work. Right now we crowdfund that support, which is a questionable model. It does allow considerable freedom for the artist, and it makes demands of her.

I have a really solid audience of readers internationally who have my back, who support my work consistently when and how they are able, and uplift my work by translating it, sharing it, holding events about it, helping me organize indie events while I’m travelling, letting me stay at their place etc. I literally couldn’t do it without my readers and I think a lot of you see the bigger picture, the holistic vision of my work. I try to do as much work as I can, as sincerely as I can. And I have to trust that me and the work will find a way, that those who believe in my work will help it continue. I have to trust my readers and the work.

I can’t write from a place of productivity and hustle. The practice has to breathe.