Should I Restart the Writer's Guide?

PLUS: Why I Just Spent 4 Months NOT Writing

Hey fellow writers. A few weeks back I let you know that as part of a broader break from writing I was suspending publication of the Writer’s Guide, not sure if or when I might reboot it. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from many of you (WG has nearly 1,000 subscribers!) how much this newsletter has meant to you. Since that announcement, my head cleared and I started writing again.

So now, with renewed energy (more on this below) I have a question for you:

Should I restart the Writer’s Guide?

I’d love your input not just on whether I should, but what you might wish for. If I relaunch it, what besides the regular posts would interest you?

• A chat function to ask me questions and discuss writing with other writers?

• More interviews with other writers?

• Editing and headline help?

• Or ???

Leave a comment or email me at rob.britt@gmail.com.

No promises yet, but I’m cogitating on all this, because as I suspected, I miss mentoring as much as I’ve miss writing these past four months.

About that four-month hiatus…

Below is a new story I just wrote. I posted it initially to my newly launched Age Wise newsletter, and crossposted it to Medium, so forgive me if you already saw it. But while the story is about aging, at its core it’s really about writing, so I hope it proves useful to you…

Image: Shutterstock. Used under the writer’s license.

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If you’ve never faced a scary, challenging, major life transition, you will. Odds are you already have. Divorce, financial squeeze, job loss — just a few of the ways life can suddenly pound an otherwise well-adjusted, happy human into submission by stripping away purpose and meaning. That’s especially true for older people, like me.

My latest transition — my main writing gig evaporated suddenly, like raindrops on hot summer pavement — crushed my psyche.

Not because I have no experience with transitions, not because I’m afraid to try something new, but because I’m in my mid-60s now and the opportunities for someone with my skills, at my age, seem thinner than the odds of me playing in a World Cup game.

In my 20s and early 30s, I welcomed major transitions, seeing each as a risky experiment well worth taking: entirely new professions, different states, another country for a while. Then quitting a great newspaper job to chase my wife-to-be, dabbling in fiction and then starting my own online science news website (1998!), then selling it and going to work for a larger online media company.

I’d found my groove, the thing I loved: Writing about science and health.

Then I was pulled up, out of writing and into management and eventually the C-suite. Perhaps I should’ve known better, but that’s what you do in this country: You move up or move on. So I moved up. It was a grand experiment. I enjoyed the challenge, even though I missed daily writing dearly.

Then in 2016 the string of successful experiments ended. I got laid off from my corporate media job, at the ripe old age of 54.

It was devastating beyond what my conscious mind could realize in the moment.

I wasn’t crushed at first. After all, I had options. I could’ve found work at another media company or in public relations. But I recognized that I was burned out and didn’t know what might or should be next. So I took some time to reflect. It took a full year for the weight of being fired (for the first time ever) to fully sink in, and by then I felt out of touch with the rapidly changing media business. I grew morose, questioning my purpose in life and my worth as a journalist.

I found ways to stay busy.

I wrote some fiction again, having a blast (and getting that monkey off my back). I worked for my wife in her business for a stretch (enduring tasks I wasn’t cut out for). Those experiments, both the best and the worst parts, served their purpose:

Time away from my main professional purpose in life, and doing things I wasn’t well suited for and didn’t enjoy, reminded me what I should be doing, what I wanted to do, what I was best at.

The same way digging post holes by hand will remind you you don’t want to be a post-hole digger for life.

Eventually, in 2019, I returned to writing about science and health, with no plan for how to make money at it. I joined Medium and just wrote. I needed to write. Let whatever come.

It worked. I started making a little money. Nothing close to what I’d made as a salaried writer, but nice pocket change, and sometimes more.

And then, after seven solid years publishing on Medium and loving it, another transition smacked me in the face like a stepped-on rake.

Sudden changes in Medium’s algorithms a few months ago reduced how many people read my stories from thousands, on average, to hundreds and sometimes only dozens. I fought the good fight for a few months, trying everything in my writer’s toolbox to reverse the downward trend, but nothing worked. Other writers I know saw similar shifts, which helped me realize it wasn’t just about me or my skills (though it still did feel like an indictment of sorts; thick skins get thin in a hurry when your purpose and meaning are questioned).

After a few months, it became clear I was working essentially full-time for pennies on the hour.

So I hit the pause button on writing.

I don’t have any regrets, and no hard feelings. I had a great run. Platforms evolve. It’s how they survive. I’m well aware it’s not just Medium that’s constantly changing.

Anyone who’s been in the media business for more than a few months (~37 years for me) has seen rapid change, sometimes for better, often for worse. Making money is harder in the media business than just about any other. Especially lately, given the increasingly negative effects of AI on the craft of writing and the business of publishing.

So I did the hardest thing: I took four months off from health and science writing, from all forms of writing, to figure out how to be relevant and whether that’s even possible anymore. I promised myself I would not write, indefinitely, until some sort of hoped-for light bulb might go off. I knew it’d be unwise to jump back in with no plan.

I was not optimistic.

I’d come to fear that the pace of technological and social change is leaving me in the proverbial dust. It’s a common fear these days. I hear the same from family, friends and colleagues of all ages.

Really talented people, many of them in their prime (meaning much younger than me) have been laid off in media and other AI-sensitive professions, and aren’t sure what’s next. For those closer to my age, losing a job in this work environment can feel like the end of the professional road.

So I took those four months off.

At first, I felt lost.

Then I felt lost and irrelevant.

Then I felt lost and irrelevant and morose.

Then I felt lost and irrelevant and morose and, finally, eager to stop feeling all those things.

^^^ The four stages of geezer grief in the age of artificial intelligence.

The four months off cleared up enough head space to get beyond brooding and complaining and begin some serious cogitation and introspection about my future. That led to several long and annoying (for her) conversations with my wife about who I was and where I might offer some value to the reading world.

The end result wasn’t an epiphany, by any stretch.

Rather, I landed on a better way of framing things, a more optimistic perspective on my situation: I can’t control what AI or any technology or cultural shift does to my prospects. And since I have no desire to let a machine do my writing, there’s only one logical move:

Write.

And so here I am.

Rather than wallow in the feeling that the world is changing too fast for me, I’ve jumped back into doing what I love. I don’t know where it will go, but I’m writing again. I have lower financial expectations than ever, but I feel better writing than not writing. I have a plan for what, how and for whom I will write (this newsletter!).

Most importantly, I’ve made a degree of peace with the realities of growing older in the AI era. I have a few skills that AI does not, and I’m going to use them as best I can. For the record, I won’t be using AI to do my work for me (never have) because the research and the framing and the outlining and letting thoughts flow out my fingers and agonizing over that perfect string of words — those are the things I love about what I do.

Writing, and writing in my own way and without assistance (except for a good editor!) is what makes me happy. It gives me purpose. It defines me.

Could be the riskiest experiment yet.

Cheers,
Rob

PS: Let me know if you think I should reboot the Writer’s Guide. Leave a comment, or simply hit the heart, or email me at rob.britt@gmail.com with your thoughts.