Writers are hustlers. When you get paid cents per word, you’ve got to write a lot of words to make ends meet. And that’s getting harder to do in a crowded market. Anyone can blog. We all learn to string a few sentences together in high school. What’s the point in paying a professional?
In journalism, there’s actually a crisis because of that dynamic. There are as many reporters working today in the United States as there were 40 years ago. The machines that made publishing a lucrative business — actual printing presses — are rusting over. It’s not that there’s a lack of writing. There’s a lack of money to pay anyone to do it. For most folks writing for a living, that means writing whatever, whenever and however.
Christiaan’s guests on this edition of Out to Lunch Acadiana both write to pay the bills — and that’s not an easy thing to do. They wear a lot of hats to make ends meet and satisfy their curiosities.
Writer Charles Garret has led a curious life himself. He’s been a firefighter, a salesman, a mixed martial artist and a poet. Coming this year he’s launching a new venture Tora Arts that will turn back the clock on the communications industry – ditching the digital age for the honest touch of snail mail.
As a journalist, Chere Coen is a travel writer humping around the south for adventure and good eats. As Cherie Claire she’s a writer of romance novels— and a prolific one at that — publishing as many as two e-books each year.
Whatever medium they work in — journalism, poetry, advertising — today’s writers are hustlers, ready for the gig economy.
Out to Lunch is recorded over lunch at The French Press in downtown Lafayette. Photos byLucius Fontenot.