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A post on John Scalzi's website.
"It's 2026 and this special flavor of gilded age we live in at the moment means that what qualifies as 'selling out' has an extremely high bar. Making a living was very rarely 'selling out' in any era. I think these days the phrase should be mostly reserved for writing things you absolutely don't believe, for the sort of people you would in fact despise, with the result of your work is you making the world worse for everyone. Avoid doing that, please.
"Short of that, get paid, have those experiences and develop new tools. All of it will be useful for the art you do care about. That’s not selling out. That’s learning, with compensation."
"It's 2026 and this special flavor of gilded age we live in at the moment means that what qualifies as 'selling out' has an extremely high bar. Making a living was very rarely 'selling out' in any era. I think these days the phrase should be mostly reserved for writing things you absolutely don't believe, for the sort of people you would in fact despise, with the result of your work is you making the world worse for everyone. Avoid doing that, please.
"Short of that, get paid, have those experiences and develop new tools. All of it will be useful for the art you do care about. That’s not selling out. That’s learning, with compensation."
