The Grasshopper #46: Burnout
Give yourself space when you need it
“The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. … What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing … the thing that might be worth saying.”
In this issue, burnout and the February doldrums, more dives into interpreting stats, and AI Whisperer/prompt engineer, as a new job title for writers.
Burnout. We’ve all experienced it, that feeling that the ideas aren’t coming, the words won’t flow, and we’re just not in the mood to write. Some might call it writer’s block but to me it is a natural stage in the creative process. You’re going to have some slow periods.
February may be my least favorite month and I think it shows in my writing. Though short, the month drags on with a winter that is tiresome and gray. My writing stats are off from January and the ideas seem to be hovering just beyond my ability to use them.
But as I write this, it’s the last day of February and it will soon be bygone. And I have to admit I have indulged in some burnout time, those days when I simply decide not to write. They’re typically rare with me but I’ve had a few this month and my earnings are showing it.
My Medium numbers were down, and the Substack paid upgrade I offer is only slowly converting free subs to paid. I can’t compare the Medium stats to a year ago because my following has almost exactly doubled over the past year, but last February was slow too.
I don’t find any of this particularly troublesome. Creativity has a rhythm that we have to follow and mine was a little off this month. But March is typically a good month for me, the days are getting longer and daylight savings time adds an hour of light at the end of the day. Maybe it’s because I’m an Aries and have a birthday later in the month.
I am a little excited about a symbolic milestone I will hit at the end of the month- the one year anniversary of this newsletter. I started it last March (2022) and it has worked out well with new free subscribers coming in daily. It is certainly not a moneymaker by any standard but that was never the primary goal in starting it.
I wanted a connection with readers who might know me through my political writing and that has proven to be the case. There is a direct correlation between my Medium stats and new subscribers here. When a Medium story hits good numbers, my daily subscription rate goes up with it.
Last Sunday, in the Money Edition, I wrote about going viral and how these connections between platforms ties to any following I have. The pattern is Medium readers with an interest in writing are pitched The Grasshopper in a blurb at the end of every article published.
My theory in doing that was that many Medium readers are also writers who might want to read a writing newsletter. That has proved to be the case. Maybe it’s because I dusted off my copywriting skills to write that blurb, but it is working very well.
So, I should shake February off and move on towards spring. That’s the plan.
Constantly fine tuning my writing processes
Politics are heating up with the coming spring and we are starting to see candidates coming out of the woodwork and trying to figure out how to deal with the Trump GOP hardcore, that seem to stick with him through scandal after scandal. It will be interesting to see if this continues when the scandals give way to indictments. I think it will.
As a political observer and opinion writer, scandals and indictments fuel the fire for many of my readers, but I think Trump is wearing thin as a potential President. I’ll be happy when I’m not writing about him or seeing his face everywhere in the news.
I fine tune more or less constantly. Subject matter comes in and out of favor, various aspects of Medium’s algorithm change constantly, and I adapt. Recently I have been writing pieces that are a little longer than my average. I’m looking for a pattern.
Longer pieces require more read time and read time is the metric that gets us paid. But they may not get read as much. My typical 600-800 word pieces earn about $40/1000 views while the longer pieces, 1000-1400 words pay out more per thousand, $50-60. I have not figured out which is better but I don’t set out to write a prescribed number of words on a topic.
This is where online writing and publishing differs from freelancing. When freelancing you typically write to a word count, which often doesn’t make a lot of sense since some subjects require more in-depth writing while others lend themselves to smaller bites. When I publish online I write whatever length comes out as enough for the subject.
Tracking my numbers a little obsessively actually helps me stay motivated. It can work the other way but most of the time it is positive. I think maybe younger writers don’t realize that we got very little feedback prior to these platforms. You wrote a book or magazine piece, got some upfront money and then you would wait for a seriously delayed amount of time, often months, to know if anyone actually read it.
Feedback is real time here and on Medium and it is pretty specific. It’s a game changer for longer time writers who remember those days of having no clue what worked and what didn’t. It’s exciting when I check my stats in the morning and a piece has taken off virally.
I didn’t see much of that in February. Articles tended to require some time to pick up stream rather than busting out. I rarely know what will be popular and what will be a flop but I can see patterns, subject matter-wise. That is another fine tuning process, to adapt my subject matter to new topics when I see indications of interest. That’s the price of writing current events stuff. Topics come and go.
AI Whisperer, a new niche for writers?
“Prompt engineers such as Goodside profess to operate at the maximum limits of what these AI tools can do: understanding their flaws, supercharging their strengths and gaming out complex strategies to turn simple inputs into results that are truly unique.”
~ From the Washington Post article
The Post profiles a new job description that is hot stuff in tech right now, jobs where writers wrangle prompts for AI to generate useful business information. Called Prompt Engineers, these roles tweak descriptions and queries to get optimum results, often experimenting with different approaches.
Given that this whole ChatGPT thing has come on very quickly and seems to be everywhere at once, writers who are analytical may have a new job to consider. It’s the AI Wild West right now which is typically an opportune time to get into a new discipline.
I’ve played with the thing and my first thought was that writers are naturals to work with them, writing prompts and editing the results, which can be pretty screwy. It’s not something I’d pursue right now because I have plenty going on. But if I was starting out I’d certainly consider it.
You might find yourself in the right place, at the right time. But those windows close fast.
Did you write today?
Martin
1224 words
Mastodon: @martinedic@me.dm