The Door

You may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience . . . the pen still behind your ear, the ink stains on your fingers and then and there shall pour out of you the torrent of your inspiration." --Stanton Davis Kirkham

This beautiful quote got me thinking about what Steemit is really all about. For so long the gatekeepers in the different forms of media have acted to still the voices of the many in favor of the few who were being promoted at any given moment. This has become particularly true in the publishing industry, where a handful of conglomerates oversee 90% of all published books. Unfortunately, these giants are focused on profits, so tend to stick to what they consider safe or known genres: mystery, romance, westerns, etc.

Back in the day, the only recourse for authors was "vanity publishing," intentionally looked down on by the industry to maintain their monopoly. Besides, without access to distribution, the independent author was usually doomed regardless of their work's quality (there were a few exceptions, of course). This stranglehold began to break down in the last 20 years or so with self-publishing options that were more affordable and provided access to the world via internet sellers like Amazon. But . . .

But not all writing lends itself to book form. Some of it, like blogs, only takes shape in real time as the author's life plays itself out against the backdrop that is the world we all inhabit. Here, too, blogging has given many a voice that was previously silenced. The problem was that the author's efforts usually had to be a labor of love as the options for getting paid for such work was generally absent, negligible, or even unsavory (such as having ads run alongside your content).

Enter Steemit. No sellouts, no request for payment from anyone. Just write. Then, almost magically, as your voice grows, so do your rewards. And so for many, "the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals" has finally opened. Mirabile dictu.

Image Credits

• "Receding Hallway" @ Filip Kominik (Unsplash)