Banging My Gong – The Brand, Part 4

 If you haven’t yet read the earlier posts in the Bang The Gong series, I’d encourage you to start here and work your way back up to this post. 

So, I told you yesterday that my Internet writing career began while I was in grad school.  I didn’t really go looking for a writing gig;  in fact, I was bound and determined to teach history.  I was back in grad school for the express purpose of becoming qualified to teach college history courses.

As I mentioned, though, student loans weren’t quite enough to cut it.  After all, we’re a family of 5, and we have a mortgage and two cars.  So, when Angie became ill, went in for surgery and lost her job, it was time for me to find a new way to make a living.

Instead, it found me.

One of Angie’s good friends ran (and still runs) a pregnancy web site.  A huge pregnancy web site.  Three of them, actually.  She needed to have some articles written, and was frustrated with the poor quality of work she received from the low bidders at places like Scriptlance.  So, knowing that we needed the income, she asked if I’d like to write some articles for her.  I agreed, and chose a female pseudonym with which to write the articles.  The rest is, as they say, history.

Over the next two years, I was able to finish my Master’s degree and provide for my family with student loans and the income I was making writing pregnancy articles.  By the time I finished my degree, I realized that it would be at least another decade before the history field would be open enough for me to be able to get a good tenure-track position.  Rather than flounder around from one adjunct position to the next, I kept writing.  After all, I was really enjoying it.  And, for once, I felt like my work really benefited people.  I could see how women (and men) were directly benefiting from the research I’d done and the articles I’d written.  That, my friends, was cool.  Very cool.

As time went on, I managed to find more pen-for-hire work.  I wrote web content for a number of different sites, and did article work for several clients.  There is a chance you’ve read my work somewhere other than here, especially if you’ve read anything at the major article directories on parenting, pregnancy, conception, writing, or, believe it or not, satellite TV.  I wrote articles for traditional web sites, blogs and newsletters.  The vast majority of this work I did in anonymity, of course; because that’s how most Internet writing works.  Unless you’re writing for your own blog or web site, your work is never your own.

That brings me to today.  Today, I’m making the transition from writing for others to writing for myself.  This blog is, in many ways, the ultimate expression of that transition.  For the first time in five years of making a living writing on the Internet, I’m making it as me.

Why is that important?  Why do I want to make a living writing on the Internet as me?

Well, I answered that, indirectly, in the second post of this series.  There, I said:

I want to provoke conversation.  I want to participate in conversation.  I want to interact with my readers and with the whole blogosphere.  Like I said yesterday, I want to share my failures as well as my triumphs.  I want you to know me.

Why?

That’s a silly question, isn’t it?  Who doesn’t want to know and be known?  Who doesn’t, deep down, want to learn from other human beings, to help them when they need it, to share their experiences, to help shape their lives and be shaped by them.  That’s what being human is all about.  Apart from how we relate one to another, there isn’t much separating us from the rest of existence.

It really is no more complex than that.  I love my job, writing for the Internet.  I love that people benefit.  It gives me meaning, when I crawl into bed at night, knowing that my writing touched lives that day.

But I want more;  I want to see my readers benefit up close.  I want to dialogue with them, not just have them learn from my writing from a distance.  I want to answer questions, and ask some of my own.  Most of all, I want to help other Internet writers to achieve their dreams.

So, there you have it.  That’s my brand:  Helping Internet Writers to Achieve Their Dreams.  It’s on my new header up at the top of this blog, it’s on my business cards, and its in my email signature.  Most of all, though, it is in my heart.  It is what I am passionate about, and what I most want to spend my time doing.  And, as time goes on and this blog actually generates revenue, I’ll be able to do that more and more.  At some point, I’ll be able to refuse pen-for-hire work, knowing that my life’s calling – to teach other writers and help them on their writing journey – is enough to support me.

Tomorrow, Lord willing and the creeks don’t rise, I’ll have a surprise for you.  Make sure to come back then!

Related Thoughts on the Writing Life

• Banging My Gong – The Brand, Part 3
• The Violent Truth of Branding
• The Helium Report is Now Available
• The Essential Element of Food Blogging