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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

A Gush of Sincere Thanks

We're three months into the new year, and it's time to kick off something I often call "the worst best job about being a blogger." 

Most of the support here at Writing About Writing doesn't come from the ads. The vast majority of you block those anyway. (Which you should undo for websites you like, by the way, since revenue is the only way they're going to be able to keep bringing you the content you enjoy.) Most of the support has come from donations from all of you. I only make about 10% from ads, and one day I hope to actually phase those out completely or take on exclusive ads with products I'm really excited to be endorsed by.

Of those donors, most contributions come from about half a dozen people. These are the patron muses, and I cannot sing their praises enough. They provide us (read: all of you) with the enhanced W.A.W. experience, and are helping to usher in even better things for the future. However a little less than half the donations here at W.A.W. come in much smaller amounts from many, many of you.

This is not minor support either. To date, donations here to Writing About Writing have helped me to work one less class each week as a teacher, which freed up a weeknight so that I could focus on more writing. More recently, it has allowed me to farm out some of my househusband duties to friends between jobs who are looking for some income and don't mind doing some housework. Again, this has freed me up to focus more on writing. While there are still weeks like last week (and probably always will be until The Contrarian starts Little Supers School), I have been able to give more to the blog and more consistently because of all of you.

The reason I can do a Mailbox every week is because of donations.
The reason I can post two major articles a week instead of one is because of donations. 
The reason I can post three minor articles each week instead of just a lot of fluff/jazz hands is because of donations.
The reason I can post every day is because of donations.

More donations will mean more "major" articles each week.
More donations will mean more fiction.
More donations will eventually mean I can pay a copy editor to help me clean up my work a little.
More donations will eventually mean I can stop hosting ads or random ads for random products.
More donations will eventually mean I can solicit articles from writers who want to be paid.

In fact, one of the minor complaints a few old time readers have had is that I don't do as much of the "plot" related posts anymore. The reason is, they were largely written as creative ways to take a day or two off when things were just too busy. Since I've had far more success blogging daily, I haven't needed them as much and Season Two is unfolding much more slowly than its predecessor.

One of the best jobs that I hate in this is writing thank you notes. I've never loved writing thank you notes, but I get to sit down and thank people for paying me to write, and that is more amazing than you can imagine.

To everyone who has donated less than $25.00, I'll send you a quick e-mail and thanks to let you know I received your donation and please include with it my heartfelt apologies. I hate sending form letters, but I am getting so many small donations these days that if I stopped to reply to all of them it would take me days, and I would eventually become a letter replier instead of a blogger. I hope that i's okay if my way of thanking all of you is to keep on doing what I'm doing.

Anyone who donated more than $25.00, should expect to see an e-mail soon. They usually take me a few days to start mailing out and a couple of weeks to finish. While I am grateful to everyone, I'll try to let you folks know a little of what's going on in my world and what directions I'm hoping to take the blog. I may even ask you for some input.

Thank you all so, so very much. And of course any help is always welcome and appreciated.

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