On Writing for the Internet (among other things)

So I'm just going to pretend that I didn't lie to you guys about getting a blog post up on my first post-hiatus post. I'm not that bad, seriously. Things just came up yesterday...like Grand Theft Auto 4 and a mix exchange... they were serious business. Seriously. But today, as I'm only ripping some Bowie records to my computer, watching Firefly and living under tonsil house arrest for seven more days, I have nothing better to do than to shower you with some ORIGINAL MATERIAL! Yaaaaaaay.

But hold on, I first need to switch records.

Okay.

As you all probably know by the massive amounts that I hype it, talk about it, or even post it casually on this very blog, I am a semi-professional writer. I've been writing fiction for a large part of my life to varied success, and I've written editorials and reviews non-professionally for blogs of my own, my friends' blogs, and a few forums that I frequented at one point or another. But recently, I've decided to get a new job, which I've often referred to as semi-professional. This job is with Suite101 (plug), a website where experts on a wide variety of subjects get paid (kind of) to write articles about whichever subject you claim to be an expert in. Seeing this as a good opportunity for me to bring my writing to the masses and get paid (kind of) at the same time, I joined the site as soon as I saw an advert for it. I am now ending my first three-month stint as a Contributing Writer at Suite101. I've gotten over 1,000 pageviews, a few diggs, a few requests from local bands to be reviewed that I've very professionally ignored since I thought the bands wanted positive reviews, and a whopping 68 cents.

Yeah, 68 cents is right.

See, the time I've spent at Suite101 has taught me a great deal about internet business and how to write for the internet. I can't say I like writing for the internet, but I'm going to reapply for the job when my three-month term runs out on June 11th just because I need the experience and I appreciate what little recognition I get. However, this blog is up here for a reason, and that reason is for me to warn all of you NOT to take an internet writing job should one emerge unless you've really got nothing better to do (like me).

I'll lay it down on the line right here, plain and simple for you to see: Do not do professional internet writing unless you enjoy writing for search engines and retards.

I'm not saying that the only people who surf the internet are idiots--because then I'd be saying something about myself--but unfortunately, the majority of them are. I've had to avoid writing about moderately intelligent things multiple times in my articles, and my most 'daring' article was about Death Cab for Cutie's new album Narrow Stairs. The article was originally going to be about their rift with Atlantic Records, but it was too "unclear" if i put it in the last two paragraphs, even though I didn't have enough information about it to make the entire article based around it. So I cut it out, what else could I do? I left the part of my article most important to me out, and replaced it with a sentence or two at the end where people could do their own research if they wanted to.

And why did I do all of this? Because people are idiots, and if I don't write for idiots, then the idiots who can't search for terms more complicated than "New Death Cab Music" won't read my articles. I've been told multiple times that I don't tag my articles well, and that I don't fit enough 'keywords' (which are basically tags) into my articles. I've ended up having to load the articles up with certain keywords which will catch the eye of search engines, which in turn sacrifices my integrity, among many other things. What the site is trying to do is stuff my writing into a tiny little niche, and if you haven't noticed from my past blogging, my writing doesn't like to get "niched" very much.

No matter how much I hate my writing getting cut down at every possible opportunity, and generalizing my articles with two or three keywords, I don't think I'm going to leave this job. I'm going to stick with it because I like talking about music that much. Music is basically my life, and writing about music--even if it is for the internet--is a good enough job for me. It might not be Rolling Stone, but if I keep this up long enough, maybe someone important enough to matter will see me and realize that I don't suck at writing.

So if you're reading this and you work for any sort of publication which includes music review--hell any sort of publication which could plausibly include music review--get in touch with me. I do good shit.

For the rest of you, don't write for the internet. You don't need to stoop to that level. I especially shouldn't be stooping to that level, me being better than you and all, but I really like my music.

Did I just sell out?

-blake