My first real effort to create a book yielded Formal Dialectics (2018), a monster in the dusty old tome genre of peer-reviewed philosophy that took me four years. In it, I showed off the chops I’d developed in grad school: explicit prose, incontrovertible logical proofs, and finally the element I was most proud of: depth. The book could hold water, the reasoning and analysis were so tight. Why, I asked myself for the next year or so, was it so terribly difficult to get anyone to buy it?
I had always been a writer, even before taking my first creative writing course as an undergrad. There was always praise heaped upon me in English class whenever the assignment involved analysis, but even before that part of my life, I’d played with story creation and journaling. I wish I’d kept more of the songs and poems and drawings I created whilst ignoring my teachers in middle school.
I wasted a lot of time. I’d known since about the sixth grade, when it became evident to me for the first time that I read a lot more than most other people, that I wanted to become a writer. It was as if I wanted to avoid my fate?—?I slogged through long hours at dead-end jobs, pushed myself through graduate school in an abstruse specialty most people just aren’t interested in, and even applied myself to things like science that were fascinating but not really relevant to my core project: write well.
I sold cellular phones and taught myself to code and even started a technology company, then a biotechnology company, and the whole time, I wanted to make money so that I could afford to be a writer. It sounds silly, now, thinking back on it, but ever since I started publishing things and not getting paid for it, it seemed to me that there was this intellectual discussion going on that I wanted to be a part of. It was written, and so many wonderfully interesting people were involved! I was fascinated by it all and I wanted in.
Formal Dialectics has sold maybe 100 copies or thereabouts. Maybe a few more. My publisher has it listed on Amazon, and it’s moved a few copies there. It’s slow going, though, and far from the cakewalk I thought it would be to have a book out there. The work, for me, seemed all about making the physical object happen. It seemed like it should be all simple from there. I wrote articles for magazines and mentioned the book in the bio. I appeared a few places and gave lectures, did blog posts for a handful of sites, and finally realized that I just simply wasn’t going to get recognized unless I figured out how to get more people’s attention. There was a lesson in all of this: it doesn’t matter how good your book is if nobody ever picks it up to read.
It doesn’t matter how good your book is if nobody ever picks it up to read.
I began putting my writing online, paying attention to feedback, and trying new creative techniques this year. I won’t say everything has been a hit, but there have been many teachable moments as I’ve toyed with the medium the internet has brought us. I started a publication (Serious Philosophy) and wrote a book (Bring Back Satire) that drew heavily from social media in terms of its structure.
Bring Back Satire, Further From Home, A Murder in the Silicon Hills, these books I wrote were all fun experiments for me. Lighthearted play animates them all. Sure, they don’t get much attention, but I don’t market them and for the most part they were all written more or less straight through. Thus, they don’t represent some massive investment of my time and life energy beyond what you’d expect from a lighter book. It was a fun thing to do with my time and I regret nothing about it, even the weak sales numbers.
The problem is that nobody wants to read Formal Dialectics. That’s the big one that I care so much about. And these other projects are underperforming as well, but being online with the writing process creates the opportunity to do a lot of different things and see what works best, so that I can apply these lessons moving forward. There are a few questions I ask myself as I write each day, churning through thousands of words for Cryptowriter or one of my half-dozen or so other outlets.
Here’s a brief summary of what’s going through my head during all of this:
- what feels best to you as a writer?
- what does best in terms of different engagement metrics?
- what makes you the most money?
I must confess, I’ve gotten my first steady gig, writing about cryptocurrency via a new blockchain-based app called Voice. They’re still in beta, but you can view my profile and follow my Cryptowriter work here. And even though cryptocurrency is only a small subset of what I’m most interested in and it’s getting blown out of proportion by the amount of time I’m spending on it these days, it is still making me a better writer.
The type of deep focus that will allow me to create the thing I need to create is a focus that will come from complete immersion in writing from the professional standpoint. As long as the gig is creative, I think it’ll turn out to be relevant in one way or another. The lessons I keep learning are important ones about what people like, the sorts of writing that will result in superficial success, and how to cultivate a longer-term, deeper engagement. If I can make this work, I’ll be in a good place in life, it seems. So there’s a new thing there, a tether between what I do with my time each day and what I want to do with my life in general. And I think writing every day is what has caused this new level of awareness in me.
I think writing everyday is what has caused this new level of awareness in me.
My therapist thinks I’m well-adjusted, that I’m handling the pandemic and resulting isolation well. I would tend to agree. The time I’ve spent hating my separation from friends and dreading the news of the day has had an unexpected sunny side to it, as I’ve focused and grown throughout. There is no tidbit in this article, so if that’s what you came in here for, I’m sorry to let you down. My story at this point is not a success story yet. But it is a story of progress. And a story about a plan. The story hasn’t quite ended, yet, but every project and every effort makes me better.
If it works that way for you, and it probably does, then what are you waiting for? Write, online, until people start to read you. Experiment with different subjects. I know programmers who explore their field by writing; all the top scientists do it too.
When Einstein figured out what Brownian motion was and that it could prove the existence of atoms, he wrote a paper about it. I write every day and I’m a writer?—?but lots of other people write every day and aren’t taking that same career path. I submit that, whoever you happen to be, writing about what matters to you in a public place, pushing yourself to get better at it, and giving it your best shot will also make you better at the things you care most about.
Contact the Author
Thomas Dylan Daniel is a Texan philosopher interested in ethics, science, and blockchain. Connect via his website or Facebook, or have a look at his books. Find him on the blockchain at epicdylan.eth!
