How to Make a Living as a Writer

It’s a good pun but let’s not pretend that it takes a professional writer. I mean, have you met dads?

> I root for Horse Laws and grow sad when a state bucks them.

Another cute one!

Calling the horse/stable job a witty pun today is quite a stretch.

Maybe I'm just old and tired, but this pun is exactly like what you'd find in a movie review, which is literally the worst type of literature for that exact reason, and should be banned worldwide.

But this patchwork of low paid freelance work is the most reasonable way to make it sustainable for most people.

Have you actually seen someone write an article like that where one of the instructive steps was "have rich parents"?

This is a negative comment. The author is someone who is clearly struggling, and trying to do her best to make ends meet by working multiple jobs that she makes clear she is desperately in search of. She also can't use her hands and is in chronic pain. Please, have some empathy.

I don't see why ai wouldn't be able to copy that 'personality'.

Everything ai can read or watch, it can copy. So someone showing his personality on YouTube video, Instagram or even tiktok, you get all the video, feed it into an AI and you get an enhanced clone.

Or rather - the more weird, charismatic, and unique your AI-generated personalities are.

In the future, everyone's aidoru will be famous for fifteen minutes.

So you mean that personality will trump content? The cult of personality?

I think we're already seeing that in the most-watched Youtube videos. The most followed Youtubers usually are the ones who are most "way-out-there" in terms of personality.

You are probably thinking this means life will be more like that Jack Kerouac line "the mad ones..." I am imagining how what you describe plays out is more like a billion reality TV stars all trying to one up each other.

> Virtually all the jobs mentioned can already be replaced with AI for a fraction of the cost.

I’m not so sure. First, they are already paying pennies to the writers. Second, who’s gonna write the prompt? The bosses certainly not, so they would hire prompters. Now, you cannot simply hire a prompter with zero experience in copywriting or editing; these people would not accept less than pennies for their work. So you just go ahead and hire people with writing experience. It’s easier.

Edit: besides, assuming AI will take over, if you want an original and catchy story, you need to provide a good prompt. I cannot think someone more suitable to provide such prompts than the writers themselves. Is like saying: anyone can create their own app with LLMs. Well, I can tell you my mom or my 21 year old cousin wouldn’t be able to do so (they wouldn’t be able to be more specific than a simple “I want a spotify-like app but in red”. They wouldn’t know what to do with the LLM output, even if it comes as an executable that you just need to drop in your phone). So you need developers here as well.

My prediction is that all "anonymous" writing will be replaced by AI. By anonymous, I mean: copywriting, corporate-style neutral writing, product descriptions, news summaries, headlines, and so on. Anything where the identity of the author is unknown or not important.

However, writers that lean into their identity and inject their personality into the writing, use video, and generally have a public brand will probably do fine. The fact is: we live in a video world now, so unless you can latch onto the brand of a larger entity to grow your audience, you're probably going to need to be on camera.

(This is basically how many writers are successful on Substack.)

Writers will also continue to be needed in fields where there is zero tolerance for errors (say, technical writers at complex manufacturing companies.)

For many writers and creative types I've read and talked to, the use of AI for pretty much any reason is equivalent to crossing the picket line.

When so many models are trained on illegally-obtained data (libgen, etc.) and provide profit without acknowledgement to the folks whose creative output made said profit possible in the first place, it feels really icky to put it lightly.

What's more, the creative process is about pulling something out from inside of you, examining your ideas and yourself, and maybe showing it to the world. Feedback from others, editors or readers or whatever, is a reciprocation of that. Or if you keep it to yourself, you've learned and grown anyway, and have honed your craft for the next time you try it.

What reward is there in computer mimicry? How does AI empower this process?

From a commercial aspect it all sucks. Creatives are devalued and the creative process is arrested. This isn't new, though. Ever since we started calling entertainment "content," you could see it coming. It's a struggle Hollywood's faced since the studio system, even before. We had the subversives in the Code era, the new wave people, the auteurs, and so on, all fighting that good fight against the business people who spoke only in dollars and cents. So it was, so it shall be.

I don't think there will be an AI takeover in creative writing, except for maybe a hiccup where slop content creators chase gold. Already a couple of romance writers accidentally published stories with prompts left in them and have instantly ruined their reputations forever. I think the people interested in reading what a machine wrote are the people interested in making the machine write. Everyone else wants something from a real human.

Not everything needs to be about AI. Not everything should be.

They will never replace lived experience, in the same way McDonalds will never replace a meal made by mom.

Could AI have written this touching, funny article? There will still be a market for great writers, for now people crave connection to a real person at the other end. In this case, I'm reading it to understand something about being human. But it's true that the market for human writing as a whole will shrink further.

There have been pretty periodic recommended book "ask HN" posts through the years, you could go have a look at some. Even a quick skim will make it extremely clear you don't want to take book recommendations, or especially writing guidance, from these people.

I concur. … Not sure where, but empathy stopped me before the end.

I liked the piece on corruption. You say it’s not everyone, it’s the system. I think it might be the culture, not the system? It has become the culture of the country to think that way. This is something I’m often thinking about, how can this be changed? How can a leader say “we as a country have to change. We need to change our culture, think of corruption as illegal and destructive” , and get the citizens on board with it. Because, with my, unfortunately limited, knowledge about Africa, I have understood that in many countries a government employee can’t make a living of their salary. The position is a position enabling taking bribes, and that’s what’s putting food on the table. When it’s that ingrained, how is a transformation possible? Where to start?

One idea I’ve had, is transformation via a system similar to corruption, but regulated. If you go to a government office, you don’t pay a bribe, but you pay some kind of tip to the representative. And that tip is listed on a “menu” and is reported to the employer, and a small tax is paid. The amounts are set at a level around the commonly known bribe paid today.

Then, year by year, those tips are reduced (or stay the same, not adjusted for inflation), while the salary is increased. This is possible due to the small tip tax.

Doing this while information campaigns are running on TV, internet, schools, and so on, continuously.

Let’s say this is a 20 year project, with a clear goal of a higher level of civilization, imprinting in people that this good and this will make life better for you, your children and grandchildren.

I hope that your country will be able to fix the problem.

You’re a good writer and I enjoyed this article:

https://www.rxjourney.net/the-problem-with-our-country

I doubt the writer has any control over the website her piece is published on. It is a pretty good writeup, you should give it another try.