Does Our Writing Lose Its Virginity?

Finding the sweet spot between authenticity and monetization

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the tension between self expression, creativity and monetisation. It’s a tricky balance, one which very few people seem to be able to get right.

But there is one person who stands out to me in this regard. She is a Substack bestseller, published author and proud mother.

Today I bring you Veronica Llorca-Smith, the author of The Lemon Tree Mindset

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When Benjamin asked me to write an article about the struggle between writing from your heart and making it commercial, it felt like ripping a bandaid off.

It’s a tough conversation but a healthy one and, more importantly, a necessary one.

There’s an intrinsic contradiction between creativity and monetization. We create to be free, but we then end up following the dollar sign and fall victim to yet another system: a new platform, a new network, a cooler version of Zuckerberg.

The result is guilt. Both individually and collectively.

The purest form of writing comes directly from the source, the human genius. It’s authentic and raw like a diamond underground waiting to be polished.

And there’s something fresh about it. It’s virgin and untouched.

It’s free of vice, greed and constraints.

And it’s beautiful because the gift of writing is writing without the need for external validation, vanity metrics, or instant gratification. It’s pure.

However, as our creativity meets the real world, things change. It’s like a teenager who goes through puberty and gets a vanity kit to fit in.

We are told we need a niche, content pillars, an SEO strategy, a funnel, a persona, a lead magnet, hooks, keywords, power words…

It’s exhausting and overwhelming but we listen because it works.

The likes come.

The subscribers come.

And the money comes too.

We start to commercialize our writing and it’s only fair enough. I don’t need to apologize for making money out of my passion rather than sponsoring someone else’s dreams (and pockets).

The problem is not the monetization (I have no shame in putting a price on my IP) but the distortion it does to our writing.

Many brilliant writers end up writing not about their passion but about platforms.

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See the irony here?

We leave a job and a system because we want to do our own thing and be free, only to end up promoting someone else’s platform and get a (sort of) commission when we bring in clients (aka users, followers, subscribers) and keep them hooked.

We stop creating ourselves and start becoming an echo, a powerful amplifier that more and more people listen to, only to promote someone else’s thing.

We fall back into the system and become someone’s agent.

And by becoming someone else’s agent, we lose our own agency.

And our creativity.

I’m sharing this because it’s something that I struggle with as well. It’s easy to end up trapped and become a victim of your own success. Now that my Substack, The Lemon Tree Mindset 🌳🍋, is a bestseller with 200+ paid subscribers, I know that my cost coveted content is the how-to. And I write about it often because my subscribers ask me to, so I’m just as guilty.

I don’t have answers for you, but I have questions - many questions- and that’s always a good start and this is the main one:

Is it possible to find a balance between our passion and monetization?

When we lose track, it’s always smart to zoom out and look at things from a distance, like an outsider looking at a map to find the direction.

I try to zoom out and go back to the origin and my why.

I started writing because I wanted to help people who were feeling lost to reinvent themselves in life.

I wanted to share the mindset that’s helping me find my path and the frameworks I use to create a lifestyle I don’t want to retire from and how I’m planting my lemon tree so that others can grow their own.

Yes, I’m monetizing my work and yes, I also talk about platforms because we need them to grow, but I try to always go back to my raw diamond, the essence that got me here in the first place.

Many of my recent work talks more about mindset and less about how to grow.

I’m trying to strike that elusive balance and find the sweet spot between both.

And this is the part you are not ready to hear:

You grow slower but you are growing *your* thing.

It takes longer but it’s an investment in yourself.

You are not building for others; you are building for yourself, and in the process, others grow with you.

“When life gives you lemons, use the seeds to plant your lemon tree.”