Writing for Something Other Than Money

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” –Samuel Johnson

As someone who has been a professional writer for 25 years, I mostly agree with Dr. Johnson’s statement that only a blockhead would spend time and energy writing without pay.

What does that say about me now? I don’t make a dime off “A Fan’s Notes.” Plus, I pay to maintain this website, so this blog loses money. Coupled with the fact I could spend this time on a revenue-generating side hustle like freelancing, I feel like a target of Johnson’s derision.

But allow me to counter his declaration with my own: Writing has numerous benefits beyond financial compensation. They include self-discovery, therapy, remembrance, meditation, even fun. Those won’t pay the bills, but they can fill your cup. Sometimes that’s enough.

Since I recently rediscovered that I’m a fan of writing for all those reasons, I thought it was time to explore the non-monetary rewards of putting pen to paper. My latest for “A Fan’s Notes” explores how writing—at least the kind of writing I’m doing with this blog—can bring a payoff, if not a paycheck.

When I started down my chosen career path a quarter-century ago, I quit all non-essential writing. I stopped journaling. I rarely posted on social media. Outside my day job, I wrote only for freelance cash. If I didn’t get paid, I didn’t do it.

That wasn’t always the case. Before my writing career began in 2000, I used the skills I learned in school and wrote for fun: short stories, poems, essays, magazine articles. I even dreamed up a few side hustles around the writing craft.

During college, my good friend Logan H. Germann and I created a business called Cyrano Services, whose model was based loosely on the Cyrano de Bergerac story. We planned to write beautiful love letters and poems and sell them to guys without our writing skills who could give them to their girlfriends or crushes as if they were the author. Logan and I were Cyrano; the clients were Christian; their love interests were Roxanne. Though the company never materialized, mainly because it was the pre-digital age and we got lazy, we still consider ourselves ahead of our time.

A few years later, when I was living in Alaska, I had an idea for a parody website (a la the “Onion”) I planned to call either “The Upper One” (a nod to how Alaskans disparagingly say the Lower 48) or “Really Big Cabbage” (a nod to one of Alaska’s many quirks). The satirical articles would make fun of Alaska and Alaskans, which is easy to do. I’m bummed this idea fizzled, but this was before websites were cheap and easy to host. And again, I was lazy.

[Side note: Neither idea went anywhere, though they will be the subject of future blog posts.] 

The writing life was elusive elsewhere, too. In my late 20s, I began several non-fiction writing projects, dreaming of someday writing a masterful book like John McPhee’s “Coming Into the Country.” I twice enrolled in a continuing education class at the University of Alaska Anchorage called “Wilderness Writing,” in which I wrote essays on nature, even submitting some of them to magazines.

Like my half-baked business ideas, however, this attempt at a side hustle never happened. Thankfully, I would soon get a big break and begin a lengthy, fulfilling career as a professional writer. Writing for fun would go on hiatus. 

That big break came when a dot-com company (remember those?) in Anchorage hired me as a staff writer. My next big break—and entrance to journalism—happened a few years later when I hustled my way to a sports reporter role at the Anchorage Daily News (another blog post explaining how I got that job is on tap).

Then came a series of writing, editing, and communications jobs at various institutions and publications: The University of Memphis, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, The (Memphis) Daily News, Modern Distribution Management, Sporting Goods Business, and Outside Business Journal, plus several freelance gigs writing about the snowsports industry. 

Though I liked most of those jobs and grew as a writer during that two-decade grind in journalism, I never had the time or energy to dream up additional writing business ideas or devote serious time to freelancing or writing on the side.

I didn’t take much on because getting paid to do something takes the joy out of it. Writing became a job for me and nothing more. When I got home at night, weary from struggling with a story and striving to meet yet another deadline, the last thing I wanted was to sit down in front of a computer and string words together without compensation.

In late 2021, however, I left journalism and took a corporate communications position with Vista Outdoor (now called Revelyst). I still write, but nothing like producing 2,000-word, multi-sourced stories daily.

That shift, which came on the heels of extreme career burnout, allowed me to get back to writing for something other than money. I could find joy in the craft again. Maybe start a blog. Maybe freelance.

I had big plans, but it took a family tragedy to get my ass in gear and finally get back to writing.

In November 2019, my father died. I was devastated, having already lost my mother 11 years earlier. Anyone who’s lost a parent knows this sadness all too well.

In the months and years that followed, I documented his health battles, his ultimate and untimely death, and the ugly aftermath that involved a stressful and expensive estate battle because the woman he had married in his 70s went after all his money. I finished and posted “The Truth About Mary Jo Mayton” in April 2023. It’s a long story, but I hope you’ll read it to understand the toll it took.

Recounting that sordid tale, however, was cathartic. And it rekindled my love for writing—even when money wasn’t at stake and the topic wasn’t enjoyable.

Once that saga was behind me and I was ready to begin writing regularly, I needed a purpose. I found it in one of my favorite books, “A Fan’s Notes,” and subsequently launched this blog. I explain the origin story in the introductory post.

In most ways, my entries are nothing like the articles I produced as a journalist. I don’t have deadlines. I don’t have an editor. I don’t get a ton of clicks. And I don’t make money. But there are similarities, too. I spend a lot of time and effort on these posts, sometimes more than I did when writing professionally. And I’m tyrannical about the final product.

I’ve learned to appreciate the other rewards of the craft, something famed writing instructor William Zinsser discusses in his book, “On Writing Well.” One quote, especially, resonates with me: “There are many good reasons for writing that have nothing to do with being published. Writing is a powerful search mechanism, and one of its satisfactions is to come to terms with your life narrative.”

Though I don’t get paid for blogging, these posts help me come to terms with my life narrative. They also bring me back to my love of language and storytelling. And they remind me why I write: to reflect on the things I love, to remember good times, to find catharsis and to have fun.

For these reasons, I’m forever a fan of writing—even if it’s not for money. I believe only a blockhead wouldn’t understand that.

Author’s note: This is another entry in an occasional series on the writing life— something I’ve been a fan of for many years. Look for future blogs on how I broke into the biz, writing as a side hustle, my favorite resource guides and more.