Why I've had more success as a writer than as a musician
Your success is a result of your input.
Hey reader,
It’s been a few weeks. I hope you’ve been well (or at least, more well than myself.) I took a vacation to Puerto Vallarta with my wife and daughter in late May. Immediately upon returning to Colorado, I got COVID, and spent the next several days in quarantine.
Fortunately, I’m vaccinated — otherwise, I surely would have ended up in the hospital. I hadn’t been that sick since I caught pneumonia way back in 2010.
Returning to the Mountain Remote beat this week with an essay on my two careers. Being a musician and being a writer are actually quite similar, in terms of the input required. That said, there are some striking differences. I dive into his in depth below.
Community Shoutouts
It’s been a few weeks, and a warm welcome to the two new subscribers since the last dispatch!
Thanks to Jim, Dan, and everyone else who responded to the last essay about mountain biking the Whole Enchilada in Moab. It was a rough-and-tumble day.
Mountain Remote newsletters average a 45% open rate and a 15% click-thru rate — that is phenomenal for any newsletter, and is the motivation to keep doing this. Thank you all for continuing to read these dispatches and for forwarding them along.
Now, let’s rip through some power chords.
Why I've had more success as a writer than as a musician
As I’ve noted in prior dispatches, I spent over a decade playing guitar in a punk rock band. A total of three bands over the years, actually, but one that was more serious, and had much better chemistry, than the others.
The desire to get on stage on and rip through power chords inevitably came from wanting to be like the bands I admired as a teenager (and who am I kidding — I still admire them). Other motivations included a desire to impress girls, and the pipe dream of creating a self-driven career that kept me as far from the suit-and-tie lifestyle as possible.
Once embedded in the local music scene, it was relatively easy to find a group of guys with similar aspirations. In the mid-’00s, once I’d teamed up with a singer/bass player, a drummer, and a trombone player (yes, we had the ska thing going for us as well), we hit the ground running.
The strategy was simple enough:
Start a band and write a bunch of songs.
Practice a couple nights a week.
Get out into the local gig circuit.
Start booking gigs in other towns.
Record an album.
Make merchandise and sell it.
Tour, tour, and tour some more, until the night when a record label’s A&R guy happened to be in the crowd and decide to sign us to his label.
AND/OR secure opening slots for as many of our heroes as possible, until one of them decided we were awesome enough to take under their wing.
Quit our crappy day jobs and live happily ever after as a touring musician, partying the nights away while enjoying a care-free lifestyle of gigging and being semi-famous.
As you can probably guess, we didn’t quite make it to the final three bullet points. I’ll get into the reasons for that below. We did, however, get a small taste of each bullet point, enough that I learned a lot not only about business but about self-employment, travel, handling logistics, and dealing with other people’s problems.
We toured throughout the southwestern United States. We opened for several bands that I grew up listening to. We never met that A&R guy, and even The Toasters didn’t seem to think we were good enough to take on the road with them.
We incorporated as an S-Corp, took out a business loan, and bought a Ford Econoline (In the words of Mark Zuckerberg, I was CEO, bitch).
We had many, many crazy experiences. As immature and petty as band life can be, there are also moments that change your perspective on everything.
One such memory includes visiting the Grand Canyon on a day off, arriving just in time for sunset over the North Rim, camping overnight, and waking up in time to catch sunrise on the other side.
One memory that at the moment was awful but that has aged quite nicely into a funny story includes the engine of our van catching on fire three hours into our first tour, followed a few hours later by the front right tire exploding on the interstate and immediately veering us sharply off the highway onto the shoulder (fortunately there was a shoulder).
We also made a lot of interesting friends from across the country. The camaraderie among bands on the road is among the most magnetic feelings I’ve ever experienced.
When you meet someone in a strange town who is going through the same struggle as you, there is an instant bond. Playing a show together, and then partying afterward, secures that bond so tightly that it seems as though you’ve known each other for years, even though it’s only been one night and you likely won’t see each other again until the next year.
We did not become the next Blink-182. But we had a lot of incredible experiences and I don’t regret it for a second. I learned many things, including that the music business is not for me. Much better than never having started and wondering “what if.”
Why our band never made it big
Through all the crazy nights and overhyped expectations, our band never got to a level that allowed us to quit our jobs. Or sign a record deal. Or go on a months-long international tour.
This is why:
Our expectations were misguided from the start. We looked at the bands we wanted to imitate and failed to see through the veneer of their stage persona. Being successful takes a multi-year commitment from everyone involved and a lot of sacrifice. For example, any successful touring musician has lost intimate relationships and close friendships because they are gone all the time.
We spent too much time having fun and not enough time on marketing. In essence, we acted like a band that had already made it, when we were nowhere close to having done so. Another failure to see what the successful bands had gone through to get where they are.
Being in a band with four people is like being married to three other people. You have to be willing to live with each others’ insecurities, problems, financial situation, and everything else going on in order to make it work.
Not only that, but you have to be willing to do the same for their significant other, as they do for yours. And that significant other is very likely going to be jealous of how much emotional input (and time) their partner puts into the band.
A 3+-year relationship I had ended with the reason given being, “You love your band.”
Everyone must be willing to make a multi-year time commitment and stay focused on the end goal. And they must be willing to make that goal the top priority in their life, every single day, without exception.
No one has any money. No one is getting much sleep. Alone time is scarce.
Each member has a crappy day job that barely covers the rent. This happens at the point in life when your non-musician friends are beginning careers and making decent money for the first time. It’s very easy to feel as though you’re falling behind.
Each of these issues tends to come to a head when you’re trapped in a hot Ford Econoline or a basement practice space together for hours on end, day after day.
On top of all that, we got to a point where we’d break even financially, but when considering the gas, equipment, and other costs involved, the band never profited a single dollar.
As it turned out, we weren’t willing to address these problems together. Or at least, we were never able to find a solution to all of them.
In summary, we rose to the top of our local scene, released music, sold t-shirts, and had a number of small wins along the way. But the collective group was not willing to go all-in on the multi-year sacrifice. We got to the glass ceiling and were unable to break through.
How being a writer is similar (and different)
I’ve now been working as a self-employed writer for 12 years. I landed my first paid writing gig while I was still a working musician. Almost immediately, I noticed many similarities between the two industries:
Your success or failure is a direct result of your own input. No one is telling you that you have to do this. You control your income, your progress, and the quality of your work.
Likewise, success is the result of a multi-year time commitment and a lot of sacrifice.
Everything happens on a contract. You are effectively running a small business. I incorporated myself as Wenger Media Services in 2015 (I’m still CEO, bitch).
Once you understand the way freelance media works, you can manipulate almost any contract to your advantage, even if that advantage means only that you can have another contract.
Branding is important. How you present yourself directly influences the work that you get.
Networking is everything. You can network your way into any opportunity.
I was also very happy to discover that many of the differences between the two industries worked to my advantage:
It’s just me. No four-way marriage, no worrying about other people’s significant others. I can say “yes” to any opportunity that fits me without having to confirm it with three other people.
The mistakes I made in my band were thrown in my face much faster when there’s no one to blame for them but myself. As such, I’ve learned to be even more disciplined and self-starting.
Also as a result of that, I’ve learned how to say “no” to opportunities that aren’t right, or that don’t pay fairly. I can’t even count the number of gigs my band played that we shouldn’t have.
I can go to bed before 3 am.
Once I was able to hone these issues into progress points, I started having a lot more success, both financially and in terms of the work I was getting. I now hold staff-level contracts at two publications, with the freedom to write for anyone else at any point.
That said, I consider myself mid-level in my career. There are many points I’d like to get to, including writing another book and leveling up to contracts at higher-tier publications.
As a writer, whether or not that happens is purely up to me. That is the primary takeaway — your success is ultimately up to you, so choose a path that amplifies it.
Mountain Remote news and further reading
I finally hopped on the Baggies bandwagon. The popular Patagonia shorts are perfect for pretty much everything, and I plan to spend my summer in them. Here’s my review.
I recently finished reading To Shake The Sleeping Self by Jedidiah Jenkins. On the surface, it’s a chronicle of his epic bike ride from Oregon to Patagonia. But the prose dives deep into Jenkins’ mind, analyzing his religious beliefs, sexuality, and relationships in a manner that few adventure writers have perused. I highly recommend it.
Swap out the beach for mountains, but this article from Harvard Business School analyzes how remote the remote work crowd aims to go — and it’s pretty deep.
Why I've had more success as a writer than as a musician
Your introspection is admirable