I’ve been wondering what I want to be when [my kids] grow up, and “writer” is definitely on the table, so I figured why not start a blog and commit to writing five days a week. I chose skepticism and mothering, because that’s where my experience and my passion are.
Well, I stumbled upon a poorly researched, incendiary screed against infant sleep training in Psychology Today. I dissectedit, and boom! people have been sharing my article like gangbusters! I admit to feeling all giggly when I see perfect strangers linking to my site and saying, “this is great!”
Surprisingly I haven’t had more than one negative comment. I realize the flipside of writing something popular is that lots of people will likely hate on you too. But for now, the attention has been very positive!
So, is there any potential for actual money in writing on skeptical mothering issues? Probably not, but we’ll see how this goes. If nothing else, it’s really good practice, and I’m getting some good information out there to people who can use it.
Oh, who am I kidding with this humble stuff. Right now my actual emotional state is about like this.
Oh you know what, I don’t think there’s lots of money in writing articles for magazines but have you considered doing a blog with google ads? I’m pretty sure there’s good money in that, ask Pioneer Woman or Perez Hilton.
Hm, if you get in with the Skepchick and such there might be a future in that. What you want is to get a lot of blogging done and then have someone offer you a book deal…
Well done! A guy I worked with got a Tweet retweeted by several people, then by Digg (IIRC), then it was featured on “Tweet of the day”. Hundreds of thousands of hits. Two days later Stephen Fry retweeted it and his hits went into the millions. He was over the moon.
That is a VERY well written article, and something I was interested in anyway. Great Job!! I am also bookmarking your site; if this is the kind of stuff you write, I can’t wait to read more!
Just finished the post. Fantastic demolition work, well presented. (I think it would have benefited from fewer perjorative adjectives and nouns - “screed”, “fantastic” and so on - but otherwise spot on.) Have you yet heard from the author?
It’s good to know all that edumacation in English and Law has had some impact on my writing quality!
I haven’t heard from the author. I will be sending it to Psychology Today, along with a promise to rewrite it with less snark if they’re interested. To be fair, the evident irritation and sarcasm is largely due to the fact that I had literally just written a measured and professional post about the misinformation from anti-CIO authors (the previous post on my blog), and then I came upon this article that was so insulting and obnoxious, to the point of implying that parents whose babies cry *at all *are stupid and their children are losing brain cells due to their incompetence. It was written in anger, and I don’t deny that.
