For What It's Worth

A labor of love, but labor nonetheless

There’s a joke that circulates in the creative world about people who ask artists to do the work “for exposure.”

Meaning: “I can’t/won’t/don’t want to pay you for your labor, but maybe some new people will be exposed to your writing/photography/design/painting/music/etcetera through this project, and that will be reward enough, yeah?”

I learned this the hard way early in my copywriting career when I responded to a craigslist ad to write copy for a website. I didn’t nail down all the dollar details before writing the copy and once I sent it over to the client they refused to pay me saying, “It’s not very good anyway.” And then went ahead and used it for their site.

Illustration by Emmie Tsumura (source)

Ever since I’ve been very clear that I am a writer-for-hire and the “hire” part equals currency. Not exposure. Or beer.

Or rather, I’ve been very clear about my worth as a professional writer whenever I’ve written words for other people. Once I began writing in earnest for myself, though, I got a lot less clear.

Not about my worth — I know that I’m a good writer. I’ve been working on my craft for most of my life. But for some reason I felt weird about telling internet strangers that these words they are consuming here, in this space, are worth something. That they are not casual but carefully construction. That time and effort goes into their creation, a great deal of time and effort. My time. My effort. And that’s worth something.

Some of that reluctance stems from the way this blog was birthed. In the beginning it was a means of keeping friends informed about my rapidly evolving change of life during a global pandemic when nobody could tell each other stories face-to-face. It was also a way to keep my own personal record of a what, at the time, felt like a grand adventure. Neither of those motivations seemed like something I should charge for.

But then, I just went back and re-read my very first entry from December 12, 2020, in which I wrote this: I’ll admit that my immediate motivation for starting this newsletter is selfish. I want to write, and I want someone to read it, and I want that someone to be you.

A lot has changed since that first post. Six months later, I was living in Portugal and no longer writing solely for myself and my friends but for a whole host of readers whom I had never met. Instead of explaining the new-to-me intricacies of relocating to another country, I began writing about the long haul of life itself. Sure, I’m living that life in a new place, but the longer I’m here the less the location itself matters.

I don’t write on a schedule, I write when I have something to say. And when I sit down at the keyboard, the stories I’m compelled to tell focus on the mess and the triumphs, the stress and the dreams, the unexpected heartaches and the joy that hides just around the corner.

I believe these stories have connected with you, my readers. Because no matter where you live — or dream of living — the mess and the stress and the joy are significant and ever-present for all of us. The details between my life and yours will differ, but the chords that vibrate beneath are resonant.

I started writing here because I had something to say, and I would guess you started reading because you wanted to hear. It hasn’t been homework for either of us.

I’m still feeling the weight of all the responsibilities I carry, just as I did back in 2020. But this glass ball of a newsletter has never gotten too heavy. I have not gotten tired of stepping away from the rest of my to-do list to craft an essay here for you. (And for me. It’s also for me.)

It’s just that now I’m more comfortable claiming that these words have worth.

Over the last few years, several of you, my readers, have made a pledge to support my work by paying for a subscription if and when I ever turned on that option. Well, I’m finally ready.

Today I’m turning on paid subscriptions.

Until now everyone who has subscribed to The Long Scrawl has done so for free, and has been able to access all of my posts, the comment threads, and the archive with no paywall. None of that access will change.

I feel pretty strongly about the shitty nature of paywalls, especially when it comes to content that has been offered for free all along but then suddenly you’re locked out of it because you can’t or shan’t pay for it. I am not going to do that to you.

I also believe that artists should be compensated for their labor — and I’m including myself in that category. Any income I generate from this endeavor helps me stay off the corporate teat. Meaning that paid subscriptions to The Long Scrawl will supplement my part-time freelance writing income and allow me to continue to have more hours in the day and space in my head to focus on my own writing. Writing that is decidedly not for The Man or anything at all corporate-adjacent.

Even more than that, I believe that my writing is worth the price tag. But I want you to have a choice about that price tag, based on your own individual situation and scruples. I want you to have three choices, actually…

1. If my writing has meant something to you and you want to support my work in an ongoing way, you can choose from a couple of tiers of paid subscriptions. In addition to my undying gratitude for that support, you’ll get more of my writing, which is what (I assume) you’re here for! Once a month for paid subscribers only, I will post an excerpt from my memoir-in-progress. (More on that in a moment.)

2. If you’re not into paid subscriptions, but you’d still like to show support, you can always leave me a tip.

3. If you want to carry on reading these posts for free because you can’t or shan’t pay, you have that option as well. I will not paywall my Long Scrawl essays.

This is a step I’ve been considering for quite some months. No small portion of the thought that’s gone into this decision has centered around what extra-special thing I could offer paying subscribers.

Many reader-supported publications use the majority of their content as the exra-special thing. If you pay, you get the usual set of posts, you can comment, you can scroll the archive of past publications. But if you subscribe for free, you get only crumbs: very occasional public posts and random notes here and there. All of the juicy stuff is pay-for-play.

Since I’m not sequestering my juicy bits behind a paywall, I’ve struggled with the idea of what more to offer. Some (extroverted) writers offer one-on-one video chats. Some send a free book. Some have podcasts. Some just sit down and write an encore.

I didn’t want to overcommit. Most days I’m already writing at max capacity with the blog and the client work and the essay pitches and the occasional poem and the holy grail of my memoir.

And there goes the lightbulb: The Memoir!

Writing my memoir is work I’m already doing anyway, that I would be doing and will keep doing no matter what. What makes it extra-special is that so far hardly anyone outside my writing group has seen it.

The working title of my book is See If I Burn. It’s the story of my fundamentalist religious upbringing in a small town in northern Illinois.

It’s the story of the girl I used to be. A girl who tried to be good. A girl like so many other girls who was given a very specific set of instructions about what it meant to be good—and about what would happen if she failed. If she didn’t have enough faith or didn’t put enough Jesus in her heart. If she sang too loudly, dreamed too wildly, questioned too boldly. If her skirt was too short or her reach was too long.

If she failed, she would burn. In hell. At the stake. On a pyre. Same difference. Maybe literal witch burning went out of fashion around the time they invented the fire extinguisher, but metaphorical witch burning is still cool in churches all over the world.

“Suffer not a witch to live,” the Good Book says. “Don’t you know rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft?” said the Preacher Man, pointing a meaty finger right in the girl’s face. “I sense a spirit of rebellion in you.”

For years she lived in fear, covered in shame, doused in guilt, feeling the flames lick at her heels. Until one day she let the blaze consume her, and found that sometimes the fire can set you free.

What follows is an excerpt from the beginning of my book. If you’re interested in seeing more, I’ll continue to post selections like this once a month for paid subscribers.

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🔥🔥IGNITION SITE🔥🔥

The fire started in a church.
Close your eyes and picture one.

No, not that one.
No graceful stone walls.
No saints stained in glass.
No belfried steeple.

Set your sights a bit lower.
And then lower still.

Imagine a rectangle with no windows. Cement floor carpeted in utilitarian green. Lacquered oak pews cushioned in scratchy orange. Vaulted ceiling lined with careful oak planks and dangling an unfussed row of bronze lights.

There is nothing to distract you from the main attraction at the front of the sanctuary. There sits the baptistry, mysterious behind a velvet brown curtain. “Ye must be born again” is emblazoned on the white concrete wall above. And sitting in the place of honor center stage before the baptistry, hulks a massive oaken pulpit with a lectern built to levitate the Holy Bible, the preacher’s sermon notes.

When the pastor enters the pulpit from the rear, he is set above the congregation, surrounded on three sides by his wooden fortress. The pulpit offers so many places for his long-fingered hands to rest, their skin softened by rigorous hours spent hunched over his Bible. He can grip either side of the pulpit in ecstasy as he extols the virtues of his future Heavenly home, fingertips whitening with pressure as if he’s trying to keep his feet grounded here on earth for just a few moments more. He can clench those same soft fists and pound the angled wooden slope of the lectern in fervor, making the onion-thin pages of his Bible rustle with agitation as he expresses his disappointment in the world at large, their refusal to see the error of their ways, to repent and find their way home, here, to this church on Freeport Road in an Illinois farm town, just two breaths away from a swaying field of soybeans.

In the pews, the faithful sit at attention, pencils scratching away as they take careful notes. Fingers fluttering the pages of their King James Version Bibles, hosieried knees brushing the backs of the blood-red hymnals.

There, on the right, five rows back from the rear of the room, sits a family of four. The father, brown-haired and bearded, a bolo tie in the shape of a beehive hanging from his neck, Bible flopped open on his knee. The mother, in a neat navy suit, short hair curling around her ears, callused fingers folded on her lap. She slides her eyes to her right, suddenly, and snaps her fingers without moving her head. The two young girls at her elbow jolt suddenly to attention, straightening backs and stifling giggles. The younger sister folds pudgy hands in her small lap, mimicking her mother. The older girl returns her attention to her own child-sized Bible, the one for which her parents paid a little extra just to emboss her name in flaking gold on the cover in all caps.

My name.
My Bible.
My reality.

This is where they lit me up.

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Back when I first started writing in this space, I harbored a hope that it would mean something to someone. That the words I wrote would be of value, maybe even make some kind of difference. That hope still holds true, and always will.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading. And thank you for telling me when it means something to you. That matters most of all.

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Copyright © 2024 LaDonna Witmer