Can A Smut Writer Be Successful As A Mainstream Writer?
Because writing smut just isn’t in my heart these days
First, by successful, I don’t mean rich. I just mean finding a community of readers, really.
I’ve been struggling with my writing a lot lately. I can’t figure out what I want to do. I don’t even know if I want to write half of the time but if I don’t write…who even am I?
I’ve identified as a writer almost all of my life. I don’t know who I am if I’m not a writer. So, I feel compelled to write something. But I don’t know what to write these days.
For some reason I feel the desire to write on Medium. I don’t know why. I guess because I like the platform and at one time, I felt a huge sense of community here. If you look at the frequency of my posting though, you’ll see that I’ve been more and more sporadic about publishing. And less and less of what I post is smutty.
The truth is, I just don’t have it in me to write anything smutty anymore. Even if it did make money.
So here is my question for you…
Can a writer who has mainly identified as a smut writer start writing non-smutty stuff on Medium under the same name and make at least enough money to pay for the membership? ($5 US/$7.11 Canadian per month). Because if I’m not making at least that much I don’t know if I can justify paying that little amount every month.
Ooops — ok, it’s not all about the money. Distraction…
It’s about finding an audience.
Will mainstream readers be turned off by all the smutty stories in my archives? In which case, I just delete them? I’ve been thinking about doing that anyway and moving them all over to Substack. I’ve actually started the process and they are all there in drafts. I just haven’t completed the set up yet.
If I changed my name and only had non-smutty posts on this account would people continue to follow me? Would I find new readers?
I’m not sure what to do about this whole account.
Potentially I could start a brand new account — but then I have no followers, and I really am starting from scratch and I’m not sure if I’m up for that.
What would you do?
C’mon hive mind…I need your input!
