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Mike Sowden's avatar

As always, I read your words and they are both incredibly calming and reassuring, like listening to someone explain something I've felt for years but never quite put into words, and also, EXTREMELY ENERGISING because they make me want to leap up and write a 20,000 word response. And I think that's part of the joy of this writing-commons approach. In Seth Godin's phrasing, we infect each other with the idea virus (it's funny how that analogy is no longer as appealing as it once was), or perhaps we're like musicians jamming off each other, finding deeper layers of the melody.

Or maybe: it's just how great writing happens, Mike. Stop making everything a metaphor.

I feel the same way as you do about writing in my Substack - with the knowledge I'm relying completely on the original scientific research of others, so even if I tried to claim "ownership" in some way, I really couldn't. (Which is why when something of mine suddenly reaches a wider audience and I get feedback like "this is amazing, thanks, random English guy" I feel like saying "thank you, I'll pass it on to the people doing the actual work!!!" and then present them with a hundred-entry bibliography).

I also feel like you do about traditional publishing. I'd love to have a publishing deal! But I wouldn't want to adapt something that deserves to exist elsewhere, because that's where it can be weird and risky and commons-y enough to flourish. It feels like an unspoken loyalty to what the work deserves, and from my (totally inexperienced) perspective, tradpub feels like a very different beast: much more risk-averse, much more grounded in marketing systems that have been around for decades and that are looking increasingly dusty and over-safe at least to my eyes, and operating on a work-cycle lasting *years*, which horrifies me in the same way when I was a freelancer I could never understand why the biggest publications were the ones that took the longest to pay me. (With a *check*. WTF.)

>>"I told this person that I wouldn’t be averse to the idea, if a publisher were interested, but there’d have to be something in it for all the people who’d already been supporting this work, financially or otherwise."

This really got to me. It's how I feel too, so much at this point. The kind of gratitude for my readers that makes me blink a bit faster. And - I never want the folk who have invested their time and money in me to feel like it was a bad bet. Whatever the finish-line is of the projects I've invited them into, I want to meet them there. I want us all to cross it together. So - YES. This. Thank you so much for putting it into words, because now I can see how important it is to me on so many levels.

I'm stopping this comment now because I'll write another 19,300 words, just you watch me. But I may come back.

Bravo. I love the way you're approaching all this, Antonia.

(And thank you for the kind shout-out! But I don't think that's my idea at all, I probably stole it! See: "even if I tried to claim "ownership" in some way, I really couldn't". 😄)

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Elle Griffin's avatar

I have been contemplating this same idea, thank you for voicing so many of my thoughts and feelings!

I feel conflicted about the idea of entering my work into the commons. On the one hand, I love how my work is influenced by those who read it, and how that shapes my future work. Whenever I write something it’s not because I have something figured out, it’s because I have an idea. And after I publish that idea it enters into debate where commenters can think it through and provide further reading material as we attempt to answer unanswerable questions. That informs my work, guides it. I have completely changed my mind from one post to another as we shape one another’s ideas. It’s like a moving thought. It’s, like you said, part of the commons. This “figuring it out together” quality feels like a modern literary salon and I’m obsessed with it.

On the other hand, that constant feedback can be too much for me. Even if it’s good feedback. Sometimes I look back on the three years when all I was doing was writing my novel in solitude, with no social media or feedback on me or my work whatsoever, as one of the most beautiful times in my life. It was purely my thought. My ideas. If they were right or wrong it didn’t matter. They weren’t part of the commons. They were just mine. It was hard to then expose it and get feedback on it because it was just purely me. And I didn’t want feedback on me.

Now, I try to do as you do, to feel that the reading and writing is mine, but that once it is published it becomes ours. But I can also hear a thousand voices and commenters in my head when I’m reading and writing, so even that isn’t purely mine anymore. I feel that my mind has become influenced by so many (often conflicting) online voices that it can be difficult to even have an idea at all (because in the eyes of the internet, the idea will always be wrong to someone....) In this way, my mind can feel a little hijacked by the public. Like I can’t even express myself without commentary on that expression. And that makes me afraid to express myself because of the commentary I know I will receive on that expression.

I’ve even found myself taking a break from reading on Threadable because it feels like even my time of quiet reading and contemplation can be commented on. And I needed the space to have original thought about my readings without worrying what someone else might think about them. I’m curious how you’ve thought about that?

Anyway, sorry for the long response. You just really struck something in me today. I’m still trying to find the balance between mine and ours in my art (and maybe that’s symbolic of the commons in general-what is mine and ours?) Thank you for providing this space to think it through. I really appreciate your work!

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