The app for independent voices
The pressure to immediately monetize your writing and “professionalize” before you have the knowledge and experience to actually produce several good pieces per week is extremely harmful to young writers.
Blogging has become a kind of apprenticeship for a lot of young writers, especially those outside the MFA or magazine internship tracks. But so many of those people feel pressured to pump out water-thin listicles for an audience of a few dozen other writers (and a totally negligible income) when they could be using that time and energy to develop their craft intentionally, by reading and working and workshopping.
It’s not “discouraging young writers” to suggest that they owe it to themselves to learn the craft before they go on the open market and shove sloppy work into the public eye that they will likely regret later on.
