The Price of Instant Success
Fifteen years ago I wrote an article which caused me to stop writing for a very, very long time.
I was tasked, through a convoluted series of events, with covering the Global Atheist Convention for The Guardian newspaper. The British one. This was before The Guardian had launched in Australia and they did not have a local staff who could report on the weekend conference. I put my hand up after an acquaintance posted a last-minute call out on social media for an available writer and atheist. A quick series of emails and phone calls later and there existed a media pass with my name on it.
To really understand the wild nature of this you need to know that I was not a journalist, had very few publications under my belt, (largely science fiction and fantasy shorts) and I had been out of the workforce a number of years raising my kid. Anyway, I found a notebook, dressed in a rational outfit and got on the train to Jeff’s Shed.
I had a slight advantage over local media in that my deadline for the Northern Hemisphere gave me an extra 12 hours to work on and submit my piece. I don’t know if that was the reason, or simply the size of the audience, but my article went viral. Ridiculously so.
Even though the newspaper moderated every comment in the Cif Belief section at the time, I had already made the sensible decision not to read any of them. My mother reported that the comments were lovely, lots of people liked the article and had begun using it as a springboard for conversations around atheism and the atheist movement.
Then I started getting emails from strangers. People wanting me to give them writing advice, or workshop pieces with them. A podcast wanted to interview me on “whatever I was working on at the moment”. I began freaking out. The commissioning editor rang me from London wanting me to write more for the Comment is Free section. But I didn’t have anything else to say! I’m a pretty straightforward atheist - it’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about. (I basically believe that meaning in life is found through being kind to each other and is not dictated by invisible higher (or lower) beings.)
The editor told me that my article was the most commented on for that section of the paper, ever. It was featured on the front page of The Guardian online for days. Including my headshot. After four days they were forced to close the comment section, which normally stayed open for a week, as they could no longer keep up with the moderation of it. There were 1263 comments on my article in the end, which back in 2010 was phenomenal.
Suffice to say, I panicked. I turned all the requests for writing, guest podcasting and journalism away. I had never wanted to be a journalist, and just because I had suddenly found success didn’t change that. But I also felt incredible guilt in knocking it back. I stopped writing altogether. My last blog post was 3 March 2010.
I’m not sorry I made the decision not to pursue more social commentary type writing, but I am sorry that I didn’t get more help in moving forward. (Therapy is for everyone!)
But I’m here now, and this is writing.
If you’re curious, you can read my article The Rise and Rise of Atheism, but please don’t leave a comment!
And now I am a reference on Wikipedia!