Bodies, Forgiveness, and Tiny Beautiful Things: A Conversation with Cheryl Strayed

People need to eat and pay the rent. “An amateur is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint,” said artist Ben Shahn. “A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.” Whether an artist makes money off his work or not, money has to come from somewhere, be it a day job, a wealthy spouse, a trust f

... See more

We are in the early stages of understanding how to fund writing. There is tension because we value good writing but don't want to pay for it or think it's the best business model.

And you have to wrestle with the paywall and its very unfortunate trade-off. You want to share your work with the widest audience possible. But to any publication that’s too small for ads, free readers are simply not that valuable. For these reasons, I’ve always struggled with the paywall. Asking people to pay for writing is not a great way to make... See more