Audience (Practicing)

If developing an audience is in fact a skill–and so far, I continue to think that it is–then how does one practice it?

Honestly, I don’t exactly know–if I did I’d be doing it already. But my best guess is to follow every idea and see what works.

This is bound to be a little tiring. But surely it is better than the alternative, that is, toiling away in obscurity, waiting for magic to occur so that you get discovered, until eventually and inevitably you succumb to bitterness because it doesn’t work that way.

It just doesn’t work that way. We have to make our own magic.

Audience (An Interesting Assertion)

In reading over Friday’s introduction to the subject of audience and audience-building, I was struck by something I said: “Learning to develop an audience is every bit as necessary a skill as learning to adeptly put the words on the page in the first place.”

Given that part of the reason we write is to figure out what we actually think about something, I’m struck in particular by the word “skill.” Developing an audience is a skill? Do I really think so? I won’t say I’ve reached a firm conclusion, but as I’ve examined the idea so far, I’m inclined to say yes. And if it is indeed a skill, then it is something one can practice, and it is something at which one can improve.

Audience (Introduction)

Let’s start this discussion here:

It’s not weakness, I don’t think, to admit that some part of me wants to believe that being skillful at the craft of writing should be enough, that good work alone should be sufficient to bring an audience.

But I recognize that it just doesn’t work that way. Writing well may be necessary but it’s clearly not sufficient. If truly being a working writer means having an audience to write for, then learning to develop that audience is every bit as necessary a skill as learning to adeptly put the words on the page in the first place.

Overarching Goals

The overarching goals in my writing work right now are:

  1. To reorganize and reformat Free Refills so that it communicates that I have built/am building something of lasting value here. I spoke about this on Monday.

  2. To develop an audience. The bigger the better, of course, but I’ve seen it said that even 1,000 true fans is enough for any creator to make a living. That sounds lovely, but even 100 regular readers would be a huge shift, and could be all it takes to start to make FR into a community. I’ll aim to talk about this at greater length tomorrow.

  3. To work on longer-form writing. I aim to say more about my plans on this front early next week.

Foulest

Earlier today, while doing the dishes, I ran the garbage disposal, and up from the pipes arose the foulest stench I have ever encountered. It mixed the foul miasma of death, the rawest of sewage, and the black ooze that courses through the dank tubes of Donald Trump’s so-called heart.

After the initial disgust and horror abated, I was left with the deepest sense of betrayal. I thought I’d never been anything but good to that disposal. How could it do this to me?

Inevitable?

I stated yesterday that I finally had the insight necessary to bring my vision of Free Refills to fruition. I’ve been thinking about that today. It’s taken me almost two-and-a-half years of steady work to get to this point. Should it someday prove to be the case that what I’m trying to do here really is an insightful, forward-looking approach to dealing with the question of earning income through writing in the digital age, will I look at these two-and-a-half years as a long time? Will I remember all the uncertainty? That what kept me going forward was ten percent the faith that the solution would reveal itself and ninety percent the dumb stubbornness that I just wasn’t going to quit, goddamn it, that I’d spent enough years not writing and not publishing and that I was never, ever going back to that? Or am I going to forget all of that and act like it was always inevitable?

Changes Afoot

For those of you still checking in here regularly, some of the daily publishing might be about to get, um, a bit boring: Last night I finally finally FINALLY had the insight I needed to start reformatting and reorganizing Free Refills. Expect quite a few Inside Baseball-type pieces as I begin work to bring my vision of the site into reality.

The point of doing so will be two-fold. I want to document the work and the ideas behind it, and I want to create something of a map for people to follow if what I’m doing here is successful–“successful” being defined as “supportive of my goal of fully making my living through writing.”

So maybe it won’t be boring, I don’t know. Free Refills is predicated on the observation that publishing in the age of the Internet shouldn’t look exactly like publishing before it. Free Refills aims to be on the cutting edge of the transition that, even twenty-plus years into the Internet age, we are only now beginning to make.

Also, the Inside Baseball stuff won’t be the only stuff I publish. I’m building Free Refills into a major aspect of my life, and even I would find that boring.

Genius

The word genius gets thrown about so often, so lightly, that it barely carries any meaning anymore. But if your dinner is a three-quarter-pound NY strip steak, cooked a perfect rare and topped with green chile, what other word makes sense?

Wimbledon: Venus, Mugu, Cilic and Fed

Wimbledon left not with a bang but a whimper. We saw two of the more disappointing finals in recent memory. That’s too bad, after what was such a thrilling tournament. But despite a lack of competitiveness in the finals, each final told us an interesting story about each of the finalists.

Venus

For the first ten games, Venus battled hard. Her play looked solid, mostly. She did struggle mightily in her fourth service game, somehow managing to hold serve despite three double-faults. Many of those serves ended up in the net, which is often a sign of tired legs. So perhaps that game offered evidence that Venus was not actually at her best, that the accumulated fatigue of the past few weeks, both physical and otherwise, had caught up with her. Nevertheless, she had two set points against Mugu’s serve at 4-5 15-40. Mugu saved both, and from there, Venus didn’t win another game.

What ends up being most striking about Venus’s performance, then, was the totality of her capitulation. No matter how well Mugu was playing–and she certainly was playing well–Venus’s collapse defies easy explanation. Venus has a big first serve and a solid second serve. Add in that they were playing on grass, the surface that gives the greatest edge to the server, and it’s clear that Venus should have been able to serve her way to at least a couple of games in the second set. Instead, after she failed to convert on those set points, it looked like she was deeply intent on getting the hell off the court as quickly as possible.

We’re forced, I think, to consider Venus something of an enigma. She evidently loves her job–she says so in interviews all the time, and what else would keep a 37-year-old woman with a bank account like Venus’s continuing with the grind of tour-level tennis besides that she actually enjoys it? Over the course of her career, she’s certainly proved to be one of the all-time greats. This year, at 37 years old, she’s twice this made Slam finals. Her performances have been undeniably impressive.

Well, except in the finals themselves. All too often throughout her career, Venus has failed to show up on the biggest stages. So many of her much-hyped finals with Serena over the years were dogs; it’s pretty clear that she just doesn’t like playing her kid sister. I forgot that earlier this year for the Australian Open final, but boy did Venus remind me with the quality of her play that day.

Here she wasn’t playing against Serena. But yet again she disappeared.

Mugu

While Venus melted down, Mugu looked just as she had looked for most of Wimbledon: calm, cool, confident. She looked like a player we can count on to win quite a few Slams before she’s done. She gave no quarter as Venus quit. If anything, she simply got more ruthless. She played like a champion.

Hard to believe that it was just a few weeks ago at the French that she said it was a relief to lose.

Is this going to be the tale of Mugu’s whole career? Occasional patches of best-in-the-world tennis, surrounded by months and months and months of desultory, unconfident play?

Cilic

Cilic’s tears were hard to watch. The excellence he’d showed over the course of the tournament was done in by what appeared to be a foot injury just bad enough that he couldn’t play his best. At less than your best against Federer on grass, you lose. It’s that simple.

But he stuck it out. He did not retire. It wasn’t much of a match, but I admire the fortitude. And he has the game to be a contender for some time to come. I wish him the best.

Fed

Nadal won the French without dropping a set. Federer won Wimbledon without dropping a set. And yet their wins left very different impressions. Nadal seemed utterly indomitable. Federer, on the other hand, seemed tetchy, twitchy, far from his best on far too many points, not nearly as worthy of superlatives as during his astonishing run at the Australian earlier this year.

And yet, for each point in which he misfired badly, it seemed there were two in which he was just good enough, and another in which he was amazing. For Federer, that’s not just enough to win, it’s enough to dominate.