Member-only story
I was born a writer and I don’t block.
That line from my memoir was true when I wrote it last year. Now I’m 72 and I’ve been blocked for two days.
My usual subjects are government, history, and what it’s like to be a living Indian when we are all supposed to be safely dead. I know enough about these things that I seldom have to do any significant research. My spelling is not what it was and I’m terrible with dates, but the broad strokes are usually in my head.
I first published on Medium March 19, with the goal of publishing 30 articles in 30 days. I blew though that easily. As of today, I’ve been publishing on Medium for 103 days and I have 139 articles. Of course, I was needing to replace the walking around money I lost when Indian Country Media Network folded. I just broke $100. So I’m only making a tenth of what I need. The only way this will work is if my old stuff keeps bringing in dough and I’m hanging in to see if that happens.
I need quantity without sacrificing quality and so this is no time for the first block in my life.
Oh, I’ve had ideas. I wrote about both halves of the Democratic Party’s candidate debates and I was pleased to see that a lot of what I said would happen, happened. But before I could get either piece good enough for Medium, I was distracted by the matter that blocked me, and I lost the timing advantage that…
