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Most of us are think they are familiar with the term “growth”, thanks to media brainwashing. The economy this, the economy that. But how many are as familiar with the term degrowth? Even if you are, you’ve probably never heard it in connection with writing. What is degrowth for writers, and why should you care?

As with so many other things, it’s a matter of expectations. I’m amazed at how many people, how often, how inescapably, fail to answer this simple question: What do you want from your actions? What is it that you expect from your writing?

Answering such questions honestly is the only way thinking individuals can live with themselves.

Growth and Degrowth as General Concepts

I won’t be extensively analyzing what growth is, for two reasons. Firstly, this blog is neither financial nor (specifically) sociopolitical. Secondly, I want to focus on degrowth instead, and specifically on degrowth for writers.

I will merely say that the concept of growth is an insidious one. Vast resources are being poured daily into convincing the masses that growth is not simply a good way of life, but the only one. There is no alternative, a despicable witch kept telling people. Of course, they never tell us what are the repercussions of infinite growth…

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Edward Abbey

As for degrowth, in a general context, that’s a sociopolitical and ideological stance that promotes anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas. Proponents of degrowth argue we should be focusing on scaling-down production and consumption, as rampant consumerism is responsible for much of the suffering and inequality in the world.

Degrowth does not claim we should all be poor and unhappy (a silly argument often used against Marx, who never claimed such a thing). Rather, degrowth suggests we focused on finding meaning in things outside material goods, such as creativity, meaningful work, social interaction, etc.

Growth and Degrowth for Writers

For most people, writers or not, life seems to be flowing in a quasi-automatic way.

Like flight crews engaging the autopilot soon after take-off, so many of us exit childhood and go to college, find a job, marry, have children, work hard, work hard, work hardIf this whole paragraph looks familiar, take a look at this excerpt from Illiterary Fiction, retire, and die.

Growth and Competition

And so, for many writers the concept of growth seems to be sort of a given. Here is the list of despair that many writers follow dogmatically and blindly:

• Write more, more, more, more; quality doesn’t matter.
• Get your name out there, everywhere.
• Promote yourself on social media – regardless of their actually harming your writing or turning you into a fool.
• You’ve got to sell a lot, so market and spend money on ads.
• Make sure you tell everyone and everywhere when your book is free on Kindle, so that you “spread the word” (this phrase always reminded me of contagious diseases).
• Get reviews, any kind of reviews, at all costs.
• … (the list goes on, and on, and on)

Of course, as any capitalist pig specialist will tell you, in order to do the above efficiently you need to compete. In other words, you need to displace other writers.

Degrowth and Meaning

I don’t know if you’re a writer or an artist, I don’t know if you’re a writer at all. Perhaps you express yourself with coding, painting, or with some other activity. Maybe you express yourself with some hobby like chess.

Regardless of the way you express yourself, I can guarantee you one thing: You start hating what you love – be it writing, coding, or playing chess – the moment you start trying to make money out of it.

That is, the moment you try to turn something into a money-making machine, you can kiss expression goodbye.

To clarify, there’s nothing wrong with trying to pay the bills doing something you like, that’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I refer to the commercialization of expression; the all-consuming ideology of the cancer cell described further above.

To better differentiate between the concepts, and since we had a similar list about growth, perhaps we should have one about degrowth as well.

Degrowth for Writers: a Checklist

If you’re a writer who wants to focus on degrowth, you should begin to follow patterns like the following:

• It doesn’t matter how much you write; less still how much you publish.
• It makes no difference how many people know about you; it makes much more difference what kind of people know about you – better have 10 readers who understand your work than 10,000 who don’t.
• Abandon social media. Great advice for anyone, actually.
• Every dollar you spend on an ad is a dollar you could’ve spent on an experience that would’ve made you a better writer.
• If your book is free on Kindle, tell your friends or blog followers. What’s the point of trying to list it on any nebulous site (let alone paying to do so)?
• Any idiot can rate anything. Fewer people can write reviews. And even fewer know how to review fairly. Don’t waste your energy on such things. And please, don’t be like that writer who “wanted a review” and once I wrote it she decided she didn’t want it after all.

To link to the concept of degrowth more generally: Just as degrowth does not claim we should all be poor and unhappy, degrowth for writers does not mean you shouldn’t promote your book (if that’s what’s important to you). It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t seek to reach an audience (again, if that matters to you).

Rather, degrowth for writers is about understanding when such side processes affect (directly or indirectly) the main process itself, which is writing.

Degrowth for Writers Is about Living with Yourself

I do promote my books and my work in general. But I do it in my own terms, which are strictly regulated by my artistic priorities. To put it this way, if I can turn promotion itself into art – as I sometimes do with coding promo banners on Home for Fiction – then I do it.

It’s all a matter of being intellectually free. The moment you start checking your artistic integrity at the door of marketing, it’s all over. You will hate yourself sooner or later – provided you do have artistic integrity; maybe some of us are what I refer to as a writing hired gun.