What is the first thing that comes to mind when a word mill is mentioned to you? I usually immediately think of windmills and particularly “The Windmills of Your Mind,” that beautiful Michel Legrand composition for Steve McQuinn’s Sixties thriller “The Thomas Crown Affair.” But then, mills do not usually have such a positive connotation. After all, it is a hard-working mechanism that is supposed to grind something to a wheat. Or a messy pulp. Like rumor mills, Jonathan Nightingale wrote about on Medium. To writers, particularly freelancers working on all sorts of copywriting all connotation work with the so-called content mills. Or like for coffee or meat, in that case, should we use the term grinder? It usually doesn’t matter what kind of content mill is concerned — fiction ghostwriting, all those SEO copywriting mass-production sites, startups that answer silly or not so silly, undefined or very defined business questions, so-called ‘academic’ sites that do the student’s homework. Makes no difference. It usually means a lot of hard work, with plausible and quite implausible rules. And as a writer, being underpaid. And actually being exactly as the term implies — ghostwriter. Usually, there’s nothing of Casper, the friendly ghost there. Except being a ghost. An underpaid ghost. With most of these organizations, with three parties involved, the employers, writing customers, and writers, the key benefits are for the two of them — employers and customers. The writers are not third, they are last, and the whole of the system is set up like that. Of course, there are exceptions, and it is usually online sites and PR organizations that engage selected writers with a track record, do jobs for a specific, well-paying customers, where there is a thorough selection and vetting process when the writers are concerned. But what about the rest, usually a majority of writers? As a fresh writer (let’s forget the term beginner here), you are often eager to start working for any of these ‘writer grinders’. After all, they pay, and often, any pay seems better than no pay. But soon enough, in most of the cases, the pay is too small, the rules and regulations are too restrictive, and your writer’s identity is nowhere in sight. Still, what if there are very little as far as paying choices are concerned? Well, than you have to look at all the negatives of these content mills (those are usually predominant) and see which of them you can bear the most. For a while. In time, when you get a chance, you can move to those with high reputation (and pay) and/or establish your name (and identity) and get paid well. Maybe at that point, you will be able to put on Legrand’s soundtrack and enjoy “Windmills of Your Mind”, without being reminded of ‘writer grinders’, and possibly turn them into ‘writer’s grinders’. What is the first thing that comes to mind when a word mill is mentioned to you? I usually immediately think of windmills and particularly “The Windmills of Your Mind,” that beautiful Michel Legrand composition for Steve McQuinn’s Sixties thriller “The Thomas Crown Affair.” But then, mills do not usually have such a positive connotation. After all, it is a hard-working mechanism that is supposed to grind something to a wheat. Or a messy pulp. Like rumor mills, Jonathan Nightingale wrote about on Medium. To writers, particularly freelancers working on all sorts of copywriting all connotation work with the so-called content mills. Or like for coffee or meat, in that case, should we use the term grinder? It usually doesn’t matter what kind of content mill is concerned — fiction ghostwriting, all those SEO copywriting mass-production sites, startups that answer silly or not so silly, undefined or very defined business questions, so-called ‘academic’ sites that do the student’s homework. Makes no difference. It usually means a lot of hard work, with plausible and quite implausible rules. And as a writer, being underpaid. And actually being exactly as the term implies — ghostwriter. Usually, there’s nothing of Casper, the friendly ghost there. Except being a ghost. An underpaid ghost. With most of these organizations, with three parties involved, the employers, writing customers, and writers, the key benefits are for the two of them — employers and customers. The writers are not third, they are last, and the whole of the system is set up like that. Of course, there are exceptions, and it is usually online sites and PR organizations that engage selected writers with a track record, do jobs for a specific, well-paying customers, where there is a thorough selection and vetting process when the writers are concerned. But what about the rest, usually a majority of writers? As a fresh writer (let’s forget the term beginner here), you are often eager to start working for any of these ‘writer grinders’. After all, they pay, and often, any pay seems better than no pay. But soon enough, in most of the cases, the pay is too small, the rules and regulations are too restrictive, and your writer’s identity is nowhere in sight. Still, what if there are very little as far as paying choices are concerned? Well, than you have to look at all the negatives of these content mills (those are usually predominant) and see which of them you can bear the most. For a while. In time, when you get a chance, you can move to those with high reputation (and pay) and/or establish your name (and identity) and get paid well. Maybe at that point, you will be able to put on Legrand’s soundtrack and enjoy “Windmills of Your Mind”, without being reminded of ‘writer grinders’, and possibly turn them into ‘writer’s grinders’. |
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February 2020
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