Financial Pledge

Financial Pledge

When I was part of an upper middle class family, I could give away 10% of my income to local children's literacy charities and promise that another 10% would be poured back into the blog for improvements. They were my Halcyon Days. *wistful sigh*

Sadly, this has changed.

I will continue as always to donate 10% of my Paypal one-time donations to Oakland Literacy charities. It's a lot less than it used to be, but now that I have rent and groceries and utilities to pay, and the budget is pretty shoestring. My Patreon details how much and at what income levels I will begin to donate greater amounts of one-time donations and portions of my income donations to the same charity.

I can no longer post my financials publicly. There have been some professional encouragements that I avoid this particular method of staying transparent. I will have to settle for crossing my heart and hoping to die and sometimes the kids write letters thanking donors and I can post those. Perhaps some day I can make for a very boring day on the part of some investigative journalist when they call up the library and/or ask me for my receipts.

A Long Overdue Post

I was going to do the picture of the moths flying out
of my wallet, but I thought it might be too ham handed.
Image description: Author in B&W photo

Rent went up this year, and by no small amount. My Covered California plan also doubled in price (and will probably go up again since the ACA is likely to be repealed or gutted). I haven't been to the dentist in nearly two years. I live in a room and maintain a shoestring budget so that I can keep writing as much as possible. And when my cat got sick two weeks ago (she seems fine now, by the way) it wiped me out for a good two months (and would have been more if not for some donor's generosity). The underpants gnomes have also recently raided my drawers (see what I did there?).

I know the world is a strange and scary place right now, but if there were ever a time to support the artists and entertainers you want to see survive and keep doing what you love rather than serving you your next cheeseburger or driving your next Lyft to the airport, that time is now. Doubly so for the ones that are scraping by on a wing and a prayer.

Folks, I pumped pretty hard to get support for my Kickstarter going and I know people got pretty sick of seeing so much of that, so I wasn't going to put another "pledge drive" post up for a while, but it's been several months and we're long overdue. Usually I do this about once a month and it keeps me from having that aggressive reminder at the end of every single article. ("Yo, if you like this, subscribe, sign up for e-mails, and drop some skrizzle in the hizzle!") I know we're all just trying to get paid for our work, but some approaches seem more obnoxious to me than others.

Still, I'm not going for the soft sell today. The one with the florid, almost purple, prose about how sensational donations are and how supporters lift me up where we belong and the eagles fly on the mountain high and shit. Nope. It's the hard sell this time. And the undeniable fact that artists have bills just like everyone else.

Would that we could eat own inspiration and pay our bills with exposure and "Likes." But landlords don't have fucking vision, man. They always want cash.

If you want to keep this blog cranking out content every day, keep it ad free, and maybe even get more "meaty" articles, then consider a few dollars to help me get my bills paid and keep me writing instead of driving uber, waiting tables, or teaching middle schoolers how to use flash cards instead of playing Dark Souls XXXVIII if they want good grades.

And on that note, I have created a Patreon!  (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3202389)

Patreon is a simple, easy way to give an artist a set amount of money each month. And on my Patreon, even $12 a year (just ONE FRICKEN DOLLAR A MONTH) will get you access to "The VIP Room" where I will ask folks their input on upcoming projects, run patrons-only polls, and you get to be a part of chats with other patrons.

Of course there are cooler rewards for bigger patron amounts as well. My selfie game is pretty dudical–or so I'm told.

Of course if you prefer a one time donation, the "Tip Jar" from Paypal is over on the left, and I can get you information for Venmo as well if you e-mail me at chris.brecheen@gmail.com

The Inside Scoop

Hi everybody!

Tomorrow's main "post" will be an "Inside Scoop" update.

That's a newsletter about what's going on in my life (at a slightly greater level of detail than the typical post here), a sincere unpacking of where Triexta is in production, and hopefully a few poignent nuggets of insight that everyone will find moving.

Want to get the Inside Scoop? You still can!

Despite my recent dramatic lifestyle downgrade, Writing About Writing will continue to remain free (and ad free) as art should be. And believe me there were more than a few existential crises and vigorous debates with Nega-Chris about that decision now that my pageviews are up, and "a few dollars a month" in revenue would actually make a difference. It's funny how different lofty principles can feel after an 80% pay cut.

I will also never hide the "best" content behind any kind of paywall.

However, artists need to pay their rent, buy groceries, have medical insurance, and sock something for retirement just like anyone else, and that requires we get dirt under our fingernails somewhere along the line. (Or spend a lot of time at a day job not making said art.) For me that place is opening the door to donations and "passing the hat" once in a while. I won't even guilt trip you with pop ups or sad stories at the end of every post if you just keep reading, but I'm on a budget where even a few dollars could make a bid difference, so I might have a post like this one every once in a while.

And while the "best" content will still be free, I work hard to give my generous patrons a little something extra by way of my gratitude–whether that's a glimpse into my life that most don't get or some information that I haven't shared openly.

If you like what I do here and want to see more of it, please consider a donation. My "Tip Jar" is just to the left if you're on a computer, and my Paypal is attached to the e-mail I'm always sharing here (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) if you'd rather go straight to the source. I can also use Venmo for those who have an objection to Paypal (which I share but can't quite get around it just yet).

And if you want "The Inside Scoop" here's how to get it:

• If you'd like to back Triexta, you still can!  And if you donate at least at the $50 level, you will get all the "Inside Scoop" e-mails I ever write during the course of the whole project. (Probably roughly this time next year before it's totally done.)  At the $50 level, you will also have your name on a blog of thanks that will get linked to the online version of Triexta, and be published in a thanks/dedication page in the book itself (print on demand and Kindle version). Of course the Kickstarter fundraiser has closed, so we will have to do our transaction through Paypal or Venmo, but if you send me money with the note "For Triexta" I can manually add your name to the list of whatever reward tier you choose and send you Kickstarter updates through e-mail.
• Want to just get THIS issue of the Inside Scoop? Donate $2 (or more) and put in the notes "Inside Scoop" and I will send you this month's issue as an e-mail.
• I will very soon have a Patreon up, and anyone who donates at the $5/month level or more will get the same Inside Scoop that I'm currently writing for Triexta (as well as further newsletters of the same type once the current project is complete). There will be other rewards as well. Stay tuned!

I know we live in interesting times and for reasons great and small not everyone even has a couple of bucks to fling at the web content they enjoy. That's okay. Enjoy.

However, if I'm ever going to be able to more frequent and higher quality posts, I'm going to have to make writing my day job, and currently my writing income is about half of what I need. Further, 90% of that comes from fewer than a half a dozen amazing and spectaular patrons. I hope to extend my donation base to lots more people giving smaller amounts.

So if you want tomorrow's "post," all it'll take is a couple of bucks and the words "Inside Scoop" in the notes.

And no matter if you can give, can give generously, or just can't afford it right now, you are all what is making this great experiment come to life. And thank you so much for reading.

Kickstarter Update

I woke up to over $10k pledged to my Kickstarter. (http://kck.st/1TV2MQp)

I would say something cliche like "I don't even have words," but then you all might doubt that you had put your faith into the right writer because that's kind of what we do....

Read the full update through our Kickstarter 


Also, the current flex goal we're working on involves cover art and professional help with formatting (so there's still a chance to back this project and make it even better):


Flex Goal #5 $12,500 (Looking good Triexta. Looking real good!) Often one can really tell when they're looking at a self published book. The cover is nondescript and there are numerous formatting and kerning errors in the print. They just don't look as good as the books from a publisher.  At this level I will commission a piece of professional artwork from A Grey Artistry for Triexta's cover. I will also solicit professional assistance in making sure that the formatting of both the e-reader and the print on demand version is as close to professional quality as I can get.

Writing for Income (Mailbox)

A depiction of exactly how it works.
Image description: Red mailbox with a stack of $100 bills in it.

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will try to answer a couple each week. I have a LOT of backlogged questions right now because my life is a dumpster fire, but I will try to eventually get to all of them.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. I am happy to answer questions about the money side of writing and blogging since that aspect is usually treated like a dirty little secret.]  

Sarah asks:

Your Kickstarter looks great, but I'm not sure why you you haven't set up a Patreon. It's totally the latest thing for artists. I would totally give you a couple of dollars a month.

My reply:

EDIT: Now I DO have a Patreon: Come check it out.

Oh I will, precious. Yes, we loveses the Patreon.

My never ending quest to debase myself for Tubmans knows no bounds. Pretty soon it'll be like one of those Klondike commercials gone horribly wrong. I don't mean the sexist "Five Seconds to Glory" ones, but like where they ask me if I'll do things like hang out with rabid chinchillas for another $2 a month, and when I'm taking the money with a broken smile, you can see me timidly petting one that's still hanging by its teeth from my left cheek....and that I've clearly become sensitive to light.

Patreon is coming, but there are two reasons it wasn't here already.

First of all, let's be honest: things were pretty fucking sweet before I was asked to move out. Money was not the problem. I was more than covering my needs and most money was going to retirement funds, a modest advertising budget, and helping out friends and artists (and especially artist friends). All of your donations through Paypal had already let me cut back on teaching hours and pitch in for a housekeeper and apply that time to writing. The problem I had was always time, not money, and unless I wanted to quit my job for the six hours a week that not going to it would provide, the only time left to trim out was watching The Contrarian. We were working on that when we got the diagnosis and the world went pear shaped. And most people who have wanted to schedule a regular contribution until now have had no trouble doing so through Paypal's "monthly contribution" button.

On August 1st it'll be worse than the shattering of the world in Final Fantasy 3 (unless you're an Esper). I will be like a middle aged divorcee housewife who suddenly has a desperate need for Ikea furniture, really cheap vegetable-laden casseroles, and the validation to my self worth that comes from lots of sex. LOTS of it. My need for bill paying cash will suddenly be tremendous, and if I don't want to rent a room into my fifties, I'm really going to need to get my shit together in a way that "Babysitter/Teacher's Assistant/Will Househusband For Food" really can't cover.

The second reason is that I had a very specific project in mind that I wanted to fund (Triexta--you should check it out if you haven't), and it seemed like that was a more focused and specific request for help than a Patreon. Patreon is a great way to get patrons who support an artist's creative endeavor's, across the board, with a few dollars a month. But I really wanted the chance to spend the next year writing a book.

There's also an issue of timing. (It's not just useful in oral sex.) Patreon patrons I can pick up on a long time line, but the Kickstarter has to fund in 30 days. I didn't want people who had signed up for Patreon to pass on the Kickstarter (I really want to write this book) because they just gave me money, and I'm sensitive about being one of those online artists who is just constantly asking for money without really pushing out much content.  I figured the timing would be better if I hit people's enthusiasm when I hadn't passed the hat in a long long time, and then waited a couple of months to start the Patreon for the same reason.

With the Kickstarter going as well as it is, I will probably be able to supplement my teaching and childcare gigs for the year. In a couple of months, when the memory of my Kickstarter and my aggressive self promotion is fading and they're all starting to not hate me for being such a Spammy Sleaze, I'll start up Patreon, and hopefully I will have impressed the shit out of enough people by next summer that Patreon donations will help me keep the momentum of that gap in my income going.

That's the plan anyway. Shouldn't take much more than an hour or two for life to completely fuck it up like Lenny on a bad acid trip. In the meantime, Sarah, if you want to support me, tossing a couple of months worth of what you would have given to a Patreon at that Kickstarter is about the most helpful thing you can do. The more that thing funds, the better I think the next year is going to go across the board. And I promise that I'll let everyone know when the Patreon goes live.


Mark asks: 

I was reading some older articles and I saw you essentially thanking your donors for the fact that you would be able to quit teaching summer school and focus on writing this year. Your latest articles talk about summer school starting up. What happened there?  

My reply: 

This is a very sad story, so don't even attempt to contain your tears.

I have to move out of my house. (I will pause here and let you reassemble yourself from your inevitable loss of composure.) The very cushy situation that I have lived in, which has made it possible to cut the hours of part time jobs out of my life in favor of writing more all while enjoying the finest artisanal vegan aioli, is going away in a mere six weeks. I will have to pay rent and buy my flavored aioli with hard-earned cash the same way everyone else does instead of skating by on a mere forty hours a week of househusband work.

Teaching summer school is a thankless gig, but.....well, actually no it isn't. I am thanked to the tune of $35/hr, which is pretty fucking spectacular for someone like me who has eschewed credentials and masters degrees in favor of foraging my own path. It's only three days a week and four hours a day, but summers for an hourly-paid teacher are usually a long three months without a paycheck. So even though it's not the first thing I would choose to do with my time, and my tween/early teen students make me pull out my hair in clumps most days, once I knew the artisanal vegan aioli gravy train was going to be skipping my station by summer's end, quitting was no longer a luxury I could afford. I will be your study skills instructor for the foreseeable future.

Most writers who don't experience strange, Andy Weir levels of insta-fame* will enter a period where they are making money but not enough money to quit their day job, especially if they haven't married money or are the principle income earner in a household. I've known writers with multiple published novels who don't yet make enough to quit and write exclusively. While tech-savvy writers in the digital age can mitigate this period by not marrying themselves to traditional publishing, it might still be several years before no day job income is needed.

During that time, writers often have to decide if money or their time is more valuable to them. Turn down a promotion? Work four days a week? Take that freelance job? A gig that pays well enough might be too good to pass up, even if it means a few weeks of lower productivity. In my case, summer school was just too much money to ignore.

*FYI: Andy Weir wrote for years before he wrote The Martian.


Alex says:

I follow your Facebook and I saw a status that you're currently making almost a third of your income from writing. I really want to be a writer and I was wondering if you could give me some advice.  

My reply:

You're not going to like this Alex.

You...specifically, Alex, are not going to like this.  You see, I thought your name looked familiar from a few comments on my Writing About Writing page, so I went and looked you up. Sure enough I discovered that you are one of the most outspoken opponents of one of the only pieces of advice I give out consistently to folks who want to improve quickly and make writing into a career.

Okay first let me clear up a factual error. I will be making a third of my income from writing, but I am not now. That's what my Kickstarter is all about. From August to about next June about 30% of my bills will be paid with backer support. This distinction is going to matter in a second, so keep it in mind.

Before we go any further, imagine that writing isn't writing. Imagine that it is dentistry. And imagine you have a dentist who doesn't really go to work except one day a week and that day is usually only a couple of hours. And even then, they might work or might not depending on their mood. They've had months before where they didn't even do so much as a cleaning. This dentist can do an extraction without too much pain and doesn't screw up too bad when filling a cavity, but they aren't particularly fast or efficient. A lot of dentists around them who really practice and learn tricks and hone their skills and learn the latest techniques are quite a bit better.

Now imagine this dentist comes to you and says "Alex, I just really want to make it as a dentist. I'm not even making a third of my income from dentistry. Can you give me some advice?"

What would you tell them?

Most professionals ply their skill "daily." Even if that is more like five or six days a week rather than every single day without exception. Even if life pops up, they generally can't take off work for more than a few days, and the worst circumstances might put them out for a few weeks, unless they hit something just life-shatteringly bad. And if they want to be exceptional in their field, they probably work longer hours, and take particular pains to excel. Artists aren't really remarkable in that regard.

If you are happy writing when the mood strikes, great! If you only want to give a day a week, wonderful. You decide your own level of involvement. But if you want writing to be a job, you have to treat it like a job. If you want writing to be a career, you have to treat it like a career.

Writing is a skill. Like any other skill, it will improve with use and atrophy with disuse. But it is also creates a product through work. And with the few exceptions of folks who win the lottery with a runaway bestseller (and I chose the word "lottery" deliberately), even working writers have to keep right on working like anyone else if they don't want the royalty checks, commissions, and advances to peter out.

The reason I can make 1/3 of my income from writing is because I write every day.

Let me say that again:

The reason I can make 1/3 of my income from writing is because I write every day.

I have donors who love what I've written so far and patrons who want to support my continued efforts. My Kickstarter has backers because I've demonstrated an ability to write with some level of competency at a consistent enough pace that they can be reasonably assured that they're not throwing their money away. (That or I take WAY better selfies than I think I do.) I'm rather certain that if I just assured them I was totally awesome at writing with a Donald Trumpian claim ("I am a great writer. I have the best words, and my writing is going to be fantastic. There will be no problem there, let me tell you. No problem at all."), there would not nearly be the support. All the networking tricks in the world can't take the place of content that people enjoy reading and their memory of you as someone they would like to read more of. Whatever money I've made from writing, past, present, and future, it's almost entirely because I sit down every day whether I feel like it or not and produce at least a couple of pages that entertain. And some days fucking suck and I hate everything I write. But those days pay the price in discipline for the ones where I'm in the zone and it just slides out.

Now here's where the dental analogy breaks down. If you write every day, you won't "make it" right away, or even for sure in the time it takes to become a dentist. It may take many years. It may never happen. This is why it's important to love it and decide if you would do it anyway because I'm pretty sure no fucking dentist would be willing to put up with a three to five year unpaid internship (5-10 in traditional....uh dentistry publishing). It's possible you can do all this work for nothing, so it has to be it's own reward. But what's not really possible achieving all the accolades of success without putting in the sweat equity. That's just not going to happen and there's no shortcut, trick, technique, or scheme that's going to make it otherwise.

Now I've seen you, Alex, go to the mat time and time again that it is stifling to your creativity to try to write every day and that you can't possibly when the inspiration isn't there and how dare I post yet another article that encourages writers to make their enjoyable hobby feel like work. Just about every time one of my posts is about writing daily, you've got something–something that's usually just a little more snippy than I'm being with you right now–to contribute about how that's at least bad advice for the creative soul within you, if not downright damaging to the writing world at large. (Who all apparently will churn out a lot more if they stop writing, I guess.) I've got to wonder at the irony here. Do you think maybe these things might be connected? Maybe?

If you don't want to write every day, that's cool...if a fun hobby that never feels like work is all you want out of writing. Seriously, it's really okay! Enjoy what brings you bliss. Frankly, I think more people could stand to be honest about not wanting to write for a living instead of filling the world with folks who are confused that they're not making career caliber money from weekend warrior effort.

But it's not really a coincidence that all the writers making day job money from writing dispense the same two pieces of advice: "Read like hell. Write every day." If you want writing to be your job, you have to treat it like it is.

The Dirt Under All Our Fingernails (Artists and Money)

http://artthreat.net/2013/06/art-money-project-max-haiven/
Image description: The words "Art & Money on a
wall created out of US currency.

This is not an appeals post, but if it makes you want to donate through the Paypal link to the left or drop a buck into my Patreon, I surely won't complain.

I'm sort of trying to figure out how to make more money with Writing About Writing. I don't mean by exploiting it or anything. You won't see a sudden burst of pop-up ads for herbal strip Texas Hold Em Nigerian finance viagra porn enlargement or anything. (I thought about re-adding ads but I really want to try to avoid that.) Rather I want to give people the opportunity, and the gentle nudge to donate. Future endeavors will roll out much more quickly the closer I am to a full time writer. [2018 Edit: Almost there. Just need to pare down a few more side gigs.]

Of course I also know that I'm more likely to get patrons and donations if I'm not jazz handsifying so much. My "A-game" is still around here somewhere, I just left it in my non-cancer/moving/toddler pants. But based on how many weasels are clawing at the back of my skull even right this fucking second, if my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles an hour of writing time...you're going to see some serious shit.

https://youtu.be/2Byz7eU8jF0
Image Description: Back to the Future screenshot of Doc Brown and Marty in Twin Pines parking lot.

For the past four years since I started this blog, and absolutely since The Contrarian was in his third trimester almost three years ago, these following things have been true:

1- I did not really have to worry about money because my family situation was essentially the house husband to a family doing pretty darned well. Money I made from Writing About Writing went towards retirement fund, blog improvements, two-months-off-to-hammer-out-a-book-draft savings, and the occasional promotion of one of my articles on Facebook.

2- Donations have helped me make small tweaks to my schedule that produced a bit more writing (like cutting down from teaching two nights a week to one night a week or getting in a housekeeper twice a month), and they have certainly helped me muscle through some of my worst moments of feeling like I'd rather put the blog on hiatus during the tough times, but...

3- The real things affecting how often (and how long) I was able to write were not really tied to money. Money could get me a Monday night off or get a housekeeper in to do the deep cleaning so I had a bit less in chores, but the real things pulling me away from writing weren't going to be helped by money. Childcare, hospitals, stress. Unless I were making enough to hire a full time au pair or something, there's nothing to be done when life is coming on this strong–nothing but write as hard as possible in the cracks.

In about two to three months, none of these things will be true.

Not only will I no longer be able to afford a carefree attitude about money because I won't be living with said family anymore, but your donations will have a direct and immediate impact on how much I'll be able to write. And when I say immediate, I mean that there's a possibility that $100 on a Friday might mean I'm not driving Lyft that weekend, so I get a better article out as soon as Monday.

I'm also remembering a conversation with someone a couple of years ago on Livejournal. "I hate artists that talk about their page views and readership and sales," she said, "because I know that ultimately that is really just them getting people fired up about them making more money."

There's a tangle of paradoxical truths about artists and money and their sordid relationship to each other. One of the most pernicious, that goes way back, is that a "real" artist shouldn't care about money. They should just do their art and let it speak for itself.

Bullshit.

Absolute fucking bullshit.

Image description: snob w/ pipe;
but w/o monocle

Not just run of the mill, "vomitoriums-are-where-the-Romans-threw-up-during-orgies" level bullshit. This is the kind of bullshit that actually has its roots in class oppression and general human assholery.

What this cultural narrative is basically saying is that art is only for the rich. If you can't sit around and do art leisurely with no need to ever get paid for it, then you are an unworthy artist sullying the entire thing with your plebeian need for food and clothing. And in the writing world, you see this in everything from MFA disdain for pragmatism and business level classes to a sneering contempt for commercial success.

It's possible to do art if you're struggling at two jobs working sixty hours a week, but art is actually work, and that means that it's likely to take significant commitments of time and energy. And your creative brain needs its needs met (and not to be putting out fires all the time) to work at peak efficiency.

Now (stay with me for a just a second) who do you think out there might want to make sure that the kind of art being produced by folks who don't really need money is considered more real, more worthy, and more exemplary of what real art is, and the kind of art being produced by folks trying to make a living with it is a voice they want to silence or muffle.

Take all the time you need.

This whole thing where artists recoil from being paid and people think asking to have their artistic labors compensated is uncouth is the propaganda of the class war of attrition. It keeps art and artists, their voices, and their expressions, coming from the upper crust, where the struggles of the less privileged are ignored. And even though there are fewer overt and explicit attempts by the higher classes to spell this out these days, the culture (like much of the "high art world") has deep roots in a time that very much did.  The social barriers that are created to separate classes in entertainment and expression are as tried and true as table etiquette. (And equally as meaningless.)

Navigating getting paid is the fish fork of the art world. And the bourgeois anesthetized art world that it creates, afraid to acknowledge that art is work, and artists don't all have trust funds and rich husbands, suffers for its lack of voices.

For one, many artists you can think of worked for money. DaVinci, Shakespeare, Picasso, Mozart. They were all working for a paycheck. Dickens had a billion kids to pay for. Warhol came from an immigrant coal miner who died when he was young. Scorsese came from poverty. And even though you can probably name a few who never made a dime from their work like Van Gogh or Dickinson (both from families monied enough that they didn't have to work very much, if you're keeping score), you often have to look at careers that were only posthumously honored to do so.

But more to the point, the idea that someone with a skill they have worked years perfecting shouldn't ask for money to ply it is preposterous in any other trade. There are a number of memes lampooning this idea about trying to get hotels to work for "future opportunities" or cooks to work for "exposure" or plumbers being told that illegally not paying for their work is doing them a favor. We only have this taboo around art because of the ancient traditions of who is "allowed" to be an artist.

Should an artist do their art only for the money?

No-ish.

Most artists–in fact, almost all artists–have to face the fact that their art work is probably never going to pay their bills (at least not all of them) and pretty much every artist save a fraction of one percent has not had to look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves the really hard question of whether or not they'd do it anyway.

Most artists worth their salt would do it anyway. It yearns to come out. No matter how many day jobs they have, the art squeezes out of their soul like the Play-Doh spaghetti press.

But asking for money once the art or entertainment product is done is another thing altogether. Trying to make money from art is as old as the capitalistic value of starving people to death who aren't producing enough labor to feed the capitalistic machine. (As is the view that if they were going to make it anyway, why should I bother paying for it, Chris added cynically.)

Is marketing and networking more important than the art itself?

No...but.....

Over-promotion is something that everyone with limited content really needs to worry about. And that saturation point is probably going to feel different to each socio/economic class. (Shockingly the more money you have, the less of an issue it is, and the more uncouth it is to talk about it.) However an artist with superb art and no reach will be similarly unable to pay the bills. So the work can't just "speak for itself" if no one is listening. Most, in fact pretty much all, artists have to come up with ways to promote their work and market it. Or did you think that the trailers at the beginning of your movie were fundamentally different than "Hey, you like writing, you might want to check out my blog."

Should an artist change their art based on what will sell?

No?

There's this idea that artists shouldn't sell out for money, but....we all do. Seriously even Fitzgerald, that fucking pretentious fucker, wrote shitty movies for Hollywood. And James Joyce had to borrow money repeatedly from rich friends because he had so many money-making schemes go awry. Money matters to an artist because if it dries up, they have to go get a job and stop making art. Hard to keep writing (or painting or whatever) if the power's out, you know?

Should an artist worry about materialism?

Yes. Yes. YES. FUCK YES!

Look, you don't find too many artists living in opulence. You don't find very many artists cruising around in expensive cars or flashing around their conspicuous consumption. The best outfit someone in the London Philharmonic owns is probably their formalwear for when they play. Most working artists interested in leaving behind side gig hobbyism for "The Show" want to do their art as much as possible and pare down their day job lives to give them as much art time with their art as possible. Most artists don't cruise around the French Riviera going into bankruptcy. If artists (who were not born into high class) have a predilection for spending money, it is PROBABLY on other art. Visual artists have more paintings than wall space. Filmmakers have rooms full of movies. Performers are constantly going to the theater. Writers' houses could easily be moderately-sized libraries.

But artists still have to fucking eat. And no one's getting a writer's next book if they're too busy driving a taxi to make rent instead of that third revision. They aren't some ethereal beings who pull their inspiration out of the celestial kingdom and never need sleep and can write just as well only on sleep-addled weekends between jobs two and three.

Artists worry about the same shit you do. Their rent. Their electric bills. Their retirement plan. Their health insurance. And if people like their art, giving them shit about trying to get that stuff covered, so that they can go on making art is especially butts.

So what does it all mean?

You mean besides the fact that I need to step slowly away from the rant that started at 7am? And that maybe I should switch to decaf and make sure all my roommate's Adderall pills are accounted for? You mean as some kind of advice?

1. Don't be afraid to ask for money.
2. Recognize where your refined sense that artists shouldn't be at all materialistic comes from.
3. Remember that you'll probably never pay the bills with your art, and ask yourself if you want to do it anyway.
4. If you can ever be the househusband of a family doing pretty well, jump on that shit, because it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and otherwise you'll have to set up a Patreon like me.
5. Oh and if you do love art, pay the artist.

Thanking 2015's Donors

Pretty much all of W.A.W.'s meager income (running at a about two dollars an hour for the work I do) comes from donation from my generous readers. I discontinued generic Google ads a few months back after I noticed that no matter how many sleazy ones I blocked, more would take their place. So now it's really totally my donors who make this rocket get off the launch pad.

That's you all.

Even though I can't ever thank you enough, I wanted to make sure everybody got one last call out before we head into 2016.

2015 saw more small donors than last year but not as many as 2013 (I got a lot of small donations after Creepy Guy); however, it has also seen a growth in a few people who are simply blowing me away with their epic generosity. Larger donations and ongoing donations have both nearly doubled (even though this year was a lot of jazz hands). When I started, I thought for sure I would be dealing with lots of small donations but it turns out that nearly half of what we make here at W.A.W. comes from about half a dozen people.

Because of all of you, I have to work fewer hours at both teaching and as a househusband to meet some of my expenses. Two years I was able to go from two classes a week to one. Last year I was able to hire a professional cleaner to come in once a month and this year they're coming bi-weekly. This cuts my househusband hours way down.  We also have some sitting help with watching The Contrarian for a couple of hours on some of my longer days. All of that is going straight into more writing time.

Perhaps the biggest news on that front is that this summer, I won't have to divide myself between househusband and summer school. The summer school gig is a cushy one, and it's hard for teachers to get summer teaching gigs, so even though my kids drive me nuts and by the end of the six weeks I'm ready to burn the school down, I'm going to keep it. However, my usual mental split where I'm coming home and tagging in to do a few hours of toddler wrangling after a day of teaching, and then spend Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday weeping uncontrollably isn't going to happen this year. You gave me the opportunity to drop summer school through donations. I just chose to drop everything else instead since summer school is a cherry gig.

Please don't forget that 10% of every penny Writing About Writing makes goes to my local library earmarked for local Children's Literacy programs*.

*Our current beneficiary

The long term goals of W.A.W., should things continue to grow, are roughly the same. (I mean besides the groupie threesomes, of course.) Eventually I hope to farm out more housekeeping so I can focus more time on writing. (I'm at about as much little kid time as I think I can handle.) That will give me more time for better quality posts, and make my offerings of fiction a much more frequent possibility. After that, I'll look into hiring someone to give my posts a professional editing sweep.

So without further ado, allow me to thank my wonderful and generous patrons. If you've given to Writing About Writing in the last year, and you don't see your name, please let me know, and I will gladly make an edit. I've spent the last four days digging through my e-mail archives and going crosseyed. Gmail has a tendency to "bundle" emails from the same recipient together if they come in within a certain amount of time, so I certainly may have missed a name.

Many have donated money, some have donated time and energy to help improve blog. (Editing help, art, guest blogging, and in a couple of "meatspace" friends cases, helping me out with a few hours of housework so that I could get back upstairs and keep writing.)

Rachel
Nichole
Matt
Mary
Simone
Melissa
Sarah
Riley
Joe
Kent
Sarah
Donald
Katherine
Cathy
Nancy
Zepher
Michael
Nickayla
Jennifer
Anna


Special Thanks
For much larger donations, setting up ongoing automatic payments (of any size), large donations of time and energy, or the donation of highly specialized skills. Also the guest bloggers who have joined the crew and decided to defer their pay back to the blog.

Sarah
LeeAnn
Amanda
Janet
Anonymous
Claire Youmans
Bethany Brengan


Patron Muses
The Patron Muses are the most generous, the most supportive, the most unbelievable. Their generosity actually shocks me in a palpable way. Some have dug deep and donated very large amounts, set up auto-pay donations that make my eyes pop...every month, they have donated hundreds of hours of time and energy helping me to edit, have supported me since the very first days of W.A.W., have helped me proliferate to perhaps tens of thousands on social media by sharing and liking posts, have used Google analytics credit to help W.A.W. place some ads, and have even shown up to conventions wearing homemade Writing About Writing T-shirts. In many cases, they've done more than one thing on this list and maybe a thing or two I'm leaving out because I'm a classy dude who doesn't talk about my sexploits, and every single one of them has, without the slightest hyperbole or poetic license, kept me going when all I wanted to do was put the blog on hiatus and take a fortnight off.

Laura
MaryAnn Stark
Kelly
Terra
Gillian
Tracesea
Amy
Ginger
Anna
Plymoth
Lydia

You are all–ALL of you–breathtaking, amazing, and wonderful. And there might be invisible ninjas cutting onions all around me whenever I think of any of you for too long. There is no way I can thank you enough. I shall keep writing and hopefully keep entertaining you.

We will be making a donation to Oakland Reads from this year's donations shortly. I won't tell you exactly how much it is (because then you'd just be able to multiply by ten and figure out our finances), but suffice to day that we will probably be able to cover at least one class or top off a couple.

Again, if your name is missing from this list, please contact me and I'll fix it right away. G-mail sometimes "stacks" multiple donations into a single e-mail notification when Paypal sends me two notifications in a short period of time, and I don't always notice the e-mail "underneath."

Giving to Writing About Writing

Our week of money stuff continues. Thank you for your patience in this. Normally I'd spread this stuff out over a few weeks, but we're already over half way through month two here and it needs to happen.

Tomorrow I will be posting a list of all the donors for 2015 (as well as the last six weeks) to Writing About Writing, and then we'll finally be done with everything and ready to roll into 2016.

But each year I also update the information about where your donations go and what you can expect in return. Also, having had a couple of conversations with high level patrons, I have decided to be a bit more conservative about the hand written thank-you emails and save my creative time and energy for MOAR WRITING!!!

Writing About Writing will never be behind a paywall site (or have the "best" content only available to Patreon donors or anything like that), and we also will never again host random ads. We may one day post ads for products we truly believe in, but the random ones for butt hair eliminators and robot crawl editing are a thing of the past. I have also opted out of traditional publishing completely, so unless some day there is an unbelievable million-dollar book deal that contractually requires me to remove my online version, everything I ever write will be free online. There might be a small charge for a e-reader version or a cost-covering charge for a print on demand physical copy, but mostly everything will be free.

Which means I am 100% dependent on the generosity of donors.

And while we love all the other ways in which fans show their support–by liking and sharing articles, with engaging and robust comments, by becoming members of or following the blog, recommending us to friends, and a host of other ways–monetary support works a lot better than "likes" when it comes to paying rent or getting a professional web designer to look under W.A.W.'s hood (for example at the shitshow I call top level menus).

No seriously.

I can't ever fully thank the few who donate so that the rest might get more and better content or express just how much that few dollars means. Right now, my efforts average out to somewhere between one and two dollars an hour on a really good day, so even the smallest donations are like mana from heaven. However, as insufficient as any such gesture is, and however "gauche" a rewards tier might seem without keychains, tote bags, and weekends in Napa, I still want to try to let everyone know in some feeble way how much you mean to me.

What your donation supports:

Though your donation may be to Writing About Writing, what you're really supporting is an entire range of my creative efforts. Of course there's Writing About Writing, but there's also Social Justice Bard (which had a rocky launch because of surprise cancer but is getting back on its feet as of this writing). There are other blogs I write for less frequently like Ace of Geeks. I also maintain a Facebook Page for Writing About Writing filled with goofy memes and puns in addition to the daily posts and cross posts. And a lot of my proto-thoughts, social justice bard test balloons and daily shenanigans happen on my public Facebook Wall–strictly speaking I don't expect anyone to donate to me Facebooking but there is a measure of my creative energy that goes in that direction. I will also make sure that W.A.W. is a "home base" with links that go to any other public writing I do.

Also please don't forget that 10% of every donation goes to a local children's literacy charity. (We're doing Oakland Reads right now.) 

Another ten percent also goes into blog improvements, which will mean editing and website construction when there's enough income to do so, but for now gives W.A.W. a very modest promotional budget to advertise some of our "greatest hits" on Facebook, gain followers, and expand our modest audience.

Unfortunately I've really had to ratchet up the thresholds for various rewards this year. This is no reflection on any sort of shifting awesomeness threshold, but simply one of my time and energy away from blogging and fiction. Especially being on the front line with supporting someone through cancer. We have a very large number of smaller donations, and while each of you is absolutely wonderful and awesome, if I stopped and wrote a thank you note to everyone, it wouldn't be long before that was all I really had time to do.

The Agape Love of Ongoing donations- Of course we love any donation we ever get from anyone...ever. It's always a treat that I don't feel like I deserve and a pleasure and an honor. That can't be underscored enough. One-time donations make up over a half of our entire revenue here.

However, ongoing donations help us in a very particular way. They help us budget for things since it is an income we know we can (at least tentatively) count on month after month. For example, ongoing donations were what helped us drop a teaching class each week (down to one), hire a housekeeper, and get a sitter to tag in for a few hours each morning, all of which have made more writing possible. The only reason I was able to keep anything going while we dealt with the cancer diagnosis is because of the help we paid for from ongoing donations. I'm going to need to crunch some numbers to see if I can afford to take off summer school this year (which if you've followed the blog, you know has been my nemesis for three years running), but if it is possible, it will be because of ongoing donations.  It's less like a surprise or a gift and a tiny bit more like reliable income. It may seem counter-intuitive, but a smaller recurring amount will help us out more than a large periodic donation that we never knew was coming and don't know if will ever come again.

It's very easy to make an ongoing donation. Just click on the Paypal link the same as you would to make a one-time donation, but instead, click the ticky box to make it recurring.

Right there in the middle....
Yessssssssssss.

Rewards....kinda:  I honestly wish I had some Writing About Writing coffee mugs and gym bags to make this part a little less ridiculous.

$1.99 or less - While I will never turn down any donation here (because I'm a starving, debased artist with no integrity or something), I will just let you know that Paypal will be taking 30 cents per transaction, so denominations this low lose 15%+ of their value. I will make significantly less if you donated a dollar a month than if you just saved up and donated ten dollars a year.

Up to $100.00- All donors at this level will be included in a post at the end of each year thanking each donor for their patronage and support*. I will use only your first name as it shows up on your Paypal receipt. If you would like your full name to appear, would prefer to be completely anonymous, or be referred to by a pseudonym please either mention so on your Paypal "note" or send me an email at chris.brecheen@gmail.com and let me know that you'd prefer anonymity/psudonymity/fullonymity.

Also, I will shoot you a quick note right away thanking you and letting you know I got your donation.

$100.01-$200.00-  All of the above.  In addition, I will send you a small personal message of thanks, including a few details about what's going on in my world and the projects I'm hoping to get started on next.

$200.01-$300.00-  All of the above. In addition, I will pick your brain about any updates you might like to see coming up in the future, and I will try to expedite that article in my mental queue.(Obviously this is more of a preference favoring than actual creative control, and I can't make any guarantees about time tables.)

$300.01-$499.99- All of the above. In addition I will ask you about anything you generally would like to see more of and try to work that in more frequently.  (Again, I can't make creative or time-table guarantees, but I am likely to at least give it a try for a while.)

$500.00+ All of the above. In addition if you approve (and only if you approve), I will give you a shout out on the blog right away. (This can be as large as your own praise-singing post or as small as a line of thanks slipped in before another article depending on what you are most comfortable with--the point is to thank you vocally, not embarrass the shit out of you.) As with the end of the year post, I will only use your first name unless you inform me you would prefer to be anonymous or have your whole name used. This is in no way intended to put you on the spot or cover you in embarrassing glory if you don't want it; it is simply the only way I have to really thank those who have been so incredibly supportive.

The Great Patron Muses-  There are a few great patron muses (but always room for one more). They have given more to Writing About Writing than I can possibly thank. While blistering hot oral sex or being part of a groupie threesome would certainly qualify one for P.M. status, most of the Great Patron Muses have either donated over and over month after month and/or have donated huge amounts and/or have done something totally amazeballs like show up to a convention wearing homemade Writing About Writing t-shirts. In addition to everything above, I have promised the Patron Muses that should I write a zombie apocalypse story (and there's definitely one rolling around in my melon) characters with their names will be making it to the helipad.


*While I would honestly and sincerely love to get back to every single donor with a personal message, there are just so many small donors, that trying to keep up with them has taken entire days of my writing time and left me with much less time to write.  Please know that I sincerely appreciate every one of you; however, I hope that you'll understand if my thanks in this case is continuing to devote almost all my spare time to bringing you more content.

One Last Generous Donation in 2015

Deep Chris.
Real deep.
Like the ocean trenches where I take my craps.

I write this post with a heavy heart.

Seriously like four hundred pounds of heart.

Whale heart.

I write this post with whale heart.

Each year there are donations to Writing About Writing (or to me as a writer since the gestalt of my writing also involves other blogs and even some occasional deep thoughts on my Facebook wall). Regardless, people do this thing I sort of have trouble wrapping my brain around where they give me money so that I can do things like hire a housekeeper so that I can clean less and write more or hire a babysitter for a few hours so I can watch The Contrarian less and write more.

This isn't money I could go live on, even in Louisiana, but it has totaled up to a non-trivial amount for about the last 18 months or so. Every single one of you is amazing and awesome.

And this is all amazing and incredible to me. I am always touched, often have sudden attacks of onion ninjas to deal with, and have no small number of days where getting out of bed and writing is a matter of remembering the people I feel like I would let down if I didn't. If you think it's easy to call in when your boss doesn't care, try when your boss is 100% empathetic and egging you on.

Thus, I try so, so hard to write everyone thank you notes. I don't like writing the cut and past form letters. "Thank you so much for your generous donation....blah blah blah" That feels so impersonal and cold to me. So for every donation over certain amount, I really tried to actually WRITE a genuine and sincere thank you note.  I tried to include some personal details about what's going on in my life, and some of the projects  I was hoping to undertake next. And since the blog started, this has been getting more difficult, but still feasible. But they're time consuming to write. I spend about half an hour on each one, and while it might seem like I'm complaining that my diamond soled shoes are too tight, that can get to be hours and hours when I have a lot of donors over the threshold. Since the first day of the blog four years ago, it has always been my favorite and least favorite horribly wonderful chore/honor.

2015 was a bear even before the end of the year turned nightmarish. Toddlers toddling and time management failures, a miscarriage in the family I live with, health crises left and right, a dear friend's mental breakdown. Another friend's suicide. I was behind on thank you notes from the first day I went to Denver to help O.G. deal with some of her post op cancer stuff.

Still, I thought I was going to make it.  About 75% of those thank you notes were written by mid-October, and I was doing pretty well. That's about when health stuff started getting very serious. We didn't know at the time what we were dealing with–just that there were a lot of really scary symptoms that the hematologist couldn't figure out. And then of course, the diagnosis hit, and nothing has been quite the same since. I've scraped together some time here and there (a bit more in the last three weeks than in the month or two before, but still not much) to do some writing, but it's been a catch as catch can nightmare.

So what I am asking you is that if you donated in 2015 (or this first six weeks of 2016), and if I haven't already sent you a thank you email, please forgive me.  And I mean please literally forgive me...of the debt of that thank you note. Life has just been too fucking awful these last few months and I really want to head into 2016 with a fresh slate instead of the thank you notes of Damocles hanging over my head.

I'll be doing my annual thank you post on Friday if you want to check to make sure I received a donation, and if you really want to just get a tiny ping from me trying (ineffectually) to express my gratitude, you can send me a quick e-mail and I'll try to write something back.  But I don't have it in me to do the 24 or so remaining thank you notes right now.

I'm still going to write to all the patron muses (and one particular single donor who dropped so much it must have felt like passing a kidney stone) because their help and support goes above and beyond–multiple donations, huge donations, monthly donations, free editing help, constant post promotions, stalwart shows of support, and inspiration– so if you're on that list and you want to forgive me, just shoot me an email (and be prepared to answer the "Are you SURE??" question). Otherwise you should be seeing them this weekend as I try to catch up on at least that much before the next round of chemo.

I am truly sorry that I dropped this ball. You all are absolutely wonderful and my life's business and inability to thank you properly is absolutely no reflection on it.

The Silver Bullet

Folks, I've got to take a few days to take care of year end business from 2015. We're already a month and a half into 2016, and if I don't finish this stuff up, I'm going to end up half way to next year before it gets done. Apologies in advance if the week feels a little boring and money focused.

So even though I'm dealing with the little cold that could (it really thinks it can), I'm going to take this week to do just that. I'll start gathering up the data for the year end donor thank you post, we'll adjust the current 2016 shout out model, and we'll add our new Patron Muses into the mix. Also, in less awesome news, the cancer has just made keeping up with thank you notes (because I send hand written ones, not copy/pasted ones) impossible. While, we had a lot of wonderful donors in 2016, I've got the regrettable task of asking some of them to forgive me for the fact that life is just a little too much to get each a personalized thank you note. That will probably be Friday's post.

However, today, I do want to remind everyone that I give 10% of every cent Writing About Writing makes (more during any kind of a pledge drive) to local children's literacy charities. In this case Oakland Reads matches up donors with teachers in need in order to try to get Oakland's literacy rate to 85% by 2020 (it's in the low 40's now).

This is YOU folks. They write these thank you notes to Writing About Writing, but every one of these is really a thank you note to all of you.

Blogust's Final Tally

Hi folks,

As you know I melted down mid month with trying to keep up with the robust goals of "Blogust." (It happens to the best of us.) However, the Blogust fund raiser never stopped, and not one, but two anonymous donors jumped in with various matching offers. (Technically I was going to do 50% and there was a donor who said they'd match as long as 50% went back to the blog, but basically after the math shook out, it was this:) In the end every donation we got to Writing About Writing was be DOUBLED as a contribution to Oakland Reads.

And folks were extraordinarily generous. I'm not going to out anyone who doesn't want to be outed, but I got a donation bigger than most of my teaching paychecks (and those go by month), and lots of people kicked in.

So here's the final tally:

Donations from "Blogust."= $535*

Matching to Oakland Reads 535 (Mysterious donor #1) +535 (Mysterious Donor #2)= $1070
Plus the 10% I always donate $53

Total= $1123

*It's not worth trying to figure out what I make in a normal month, but I promise it's not this much.

When I get back from Burning Man, there will be many thank you e-mails (both to the Blogust donors, and the embarrassingly huge backlog).

Lucky Number 7....7.....7

Yes I know $370 x 2 isn't $370. That's the second matcher.

A big thank you and congratulations to everyone who has contributed to our "Blogust" fundraiser.  So far we have secured $777 for Oakland Reads.

As a reminder, every donation to Writing About Writing is "matched" not once, but TWICE (plus the normal 10%). So if you've ever considered giving to Writing About Writing, now any donation will be tripled (with twice it's amount (plus ten percent) going to Oakland Reads.

And since our matching benefactors agreed to match every penny up to $1000, we could give them as much as two grand! If you've ever thought "Maybe I should give that Chris some money," now is a great time. Even though we got a couple of donations since I made this amazingly awesome graphic presentation, we still have over $600 to go that will still be matched.

Oakland Reads (Blogust Fundraiser)

This is Oakland Reads. 

Oakland Read's mission statement is to get the number of third graders reading at a third grade level from 38% to 85% by 2020.

Oakland Reads will be the subject of our Blogust fundraiser.

Here at Writing About Writing we always give 10% of every penny we make to children's literacy charities (usually local to me). We've given donations in Blog's name to the local outlet of the Oakland Library, helped buy a great set of readers for a local underfunded class that will last them years, and even helped the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter last year.

This August I have another a special fundraiser.

For the month of August I will be donating FIVE TIMES the normal amount to Oakland Reads (50%) of everything we make.

But wait, there's more....

We have also had an anonymous donor promise to match any donations that W.A.W. makes [up to $1000] to Oakland Reads. That means that during August, any donations you make to Writing About Writing will instantly become full donations to Oakland Reads and 50% donations to Writing About Writing.

But wait, there's even more....

A second supersecret anonymous donor stepped up to the plate and said they would be matching Writing About Writing's donation to Oakland Reads [up to $2500] contingent on the fact that I must take it as a normal, non-Blogust donation. That means that every donation you make from now until August 31st will be a 110% donation to Oakland Reads and a 90% donation to Writing About Writing.

[Edit] But wait, OMFGZOMG there's even more....

A THIRD donor has offered to match what we make here at Writing About Writing. That means until August 31, every penny donated here will become a 210% donation to Oakland Reads and a 90% donation to the blog.

Also, my readers are absolutely fucking amazing.

Thank You. Yes YOU!

Yesterday you (all of you) were able to help me fund a group of 2nd graders in one of the highest poverty schools in Oakland get a set of brand new literature readers. While we got them close to their goal, a matching charity (Oakland Reads) pushed them over the edge.

$628 is from multiple donors.
We helped push them over the edge,
but that is not all us.

Here at Writing About Writing, 10% of every penny I make (through donations or ads) goes to local children's literacy charity. In this case another local charity Oakland Reads 2020 was matching the funds, and we helped Ms. Costello's 2nd graders get the books they need.

While I can't tell you exactly how much I gave because I no longer disclose W.A.W.'s finances on the blog (for a host of reasons), and it would be a trivial exercise to "reverse engineer" how much I made if I tell you what my donation was, suffice to say that it was a non-trivial amount.

(I also stuffed the same amount into Hen Wen for the day when we can hire a web designer and really take this blog up a notch.)

Thank you all.  Thank you so, so much. Thank you for reading. Thank you for donating. Thank you for turning off your ad blocker for this domain. Thank you for sharing your favorite posts. You are literally helping the world be a little bit better by reading snarky writing advice.

Thanking 2014's Donors

Here at writing about writing our ad revenue accounts for only 10-20% of what we make overall in revenue. A few cents a day, perhaps a dollar or two on an amazing day. It might add up to twenty bucks on a very, very good month.

Perspective.

Most of W.A.W.'s meager income (running at a about two dollars an hour for the work I do) comes from donation from my generous readers.

That's you guys.

So even though I can't ever thank you enough, I wanted to make sure everybody got one last call out before we head into 2015.

2014 saw many fewer small donors than last year (I got a lot of small donations after Creepy Guy) however it has also seen a growth in a few people who are simply blowing me away with their epic generosity. The reason I could actually pay a couple of bills with writing is mostly due to about six people. When I started, I thought for sure I would be dealing with lots of small donations but it turns out that vastly more of what we make here at W.A.W. comes from fewer than a dozen people.

Here's what's happening with this money, just so you don't think it's ALL going to hookers and blow. (Only most of it.) Because of you guys, I have to work fewer hours at both teaching and as a househusband to meet some of my expenses. Last year I was able to go from two classes a week to one. We've been able to hire a professional cleaner to come in once a month and a friend to watch after The Contrarian for a couple of hours on some of my longer days. All of that is going straight into more writing time.

Perhaps the biggest news on that front is that I don't need to teach summer school this year. I love those kids, but those of you who've been with me since last summer (and especially those who remember all the way back to the summer of 2013) know that those six weeks are absolutely hell on my writing schedule. So this summer you can look forward to a rich schedule of "meaty" updates instead of six weeks of jazz hands.

Please don't forget that 10% of every penny Writing About Writing makes goes to my local library earmarked for local Children's Literacy programs*.

*Our current beneficiary.

The long term goals of W.A.W., should things continue to grow, are still basically the same. Eventually I hope to farm out more housekeeping so I can focus more time on writing. That will give me more time for better quality posts, and make my offerings of fiction a much more frequent possibility. After that, I'll look into hiring someone to give my posts a professional editing sweep. Though it may be a long way off, I would eventually like to get rid of the ads on Writing About Writing, and have the monetization structure be strictly donation based.

You may notice that I've abandoned my complicated "tier" system that I used the last couple of years. It made a few people nervous to have even the "range" of their donations visible–even with only first names, so I tried to respect that. If you would like your donation amount (or last name) visible, just let me know.

So without further ado, allow me to thank my wonderful and generous patrons.
Many have donated money, some have donated time and energy to help improve blog. (Editing help, art, guest blogging, and in a couple of "meatspace" friends cases, helping me out with a few hours of housework so that I could get back upstairs and keep writing.)

Adam
Mike
Wayne
Amy
Jasna
Laura
Scott
Brian
Jennifer
Janus
Alicia
Jennifer
Michael
Flitterkitten
Michelle
Joe
Ginger
Jennifer
Hassna
Alex
Ben
Kristine

Special Thanks
For much larger donations, setting up ongoing automatic payments (of any size), large donations of time and energy, or the donation of highly specialized skills.

Epona
Amanda
Robert
LeeAnn
Jennifer
Fatima
Andrew
Ali
Ashly (For donating time and energy to give me free art with only the promise of exposure. Check her out at A Grey Artistry)

Patron Muses
The Patron Muses are the most generous, the most supportive, the most unbelievable. Their generosity actually shocks me in a palpable way. Some have dug deep and donated very large amounts, set up auto-pay donations that make my eyes pop...every month, they have donated hundreds of hours of time and energy helping me to edit, have supported me since the very first days of W.A.W., have helped me proliferate to perhaps tens of thousands on social media by sharing and liking posts, and have even shown up to conventions wearing homemade Writing About Writing T-shirts. (And in at least one case a maybe not totally hypothetical groupie.) In many cases, they've done more than one thing on this list, and every single one of them has, without the slightest hyperbole or poetic license, kept me going when all I wanted to do was put the blog on hiatus and take a fortnight off.

Laura
MaryAnn Stark
Kelly
Terra
Gillian
Tracesea
Lydia


You are all–ALL of you–breathtaking, amazing, and wonderful. And there might be invisible ninjas cutting onions all around me whenever I think of any of you. There is no way I can thank you enough. I shall keep writing and hopefully keep entertaining you.

If your name is missing from this list, please contact me and I'll fix it right away. G-mail sometimes "stacks" multiple donations into a single e-mail notification when Paypal sends me two notifications in a short period of time, and I don't always notice the e-mail "underneath."

Monetary Support 2015

The IMF finds my lack of funds....disturbing.

[Nothing here in the brackets will be going on to the "Help Us Out" tab, but it's time to update our 2015 Monetary Support condition thingie*.  

As usual, I'm going to be shass awkward (that's a combination of shit and ass....used as an adjective) talking about money. It always feels greedy to me to even bring the subject up. You've all worked so hard for your money, and my imposter syndrome lobe flares up for posts like these.

I really really want to write everyone who donates a personal thank you that isn't a form letter, but if I did that, I would spend all my time writing thank you notes and none of it writing the blog.

Because of this, I've "red shifted" the donation amounts again–a testament to your generosity. Also a testament to how donors have broken down here at W.A.W. I don't get a LOT of small donations. I mostly get huge donations that leave me gasping for air and clutching my pearls.

See.

Finally, I have a request. Pretty much every donor I talk to has no interest in suggesting what kind of posts they'd like to see next or what sort of posts they might like to see more of. The best I've gotten in two years is to do more link heavy take-downs of social issues like my Shirtstorm article. (And believe me, I will.) I don't have a big box of W.A.W. keychains or T-shirts, so I'm not sure what to do to thank people who have really reached deep into their pockets for Writing About Writing. If you have any suggestions for the things YOU might find thoughtful gestures from a grateful writer with March Hare's schedule, drop me a comment or an e-mail.

*There's still time (about 24 hours) to get in under the wire and be a part of 2014s donor cycle. ]


Though Writing About Writing is a blog with ads, most of the revenue we make here actually comes from the generous donations of our readers. (The passive ads make up only about 10-20%.) And while we love all the other ways in which fans show their support--by liking and sharing articles, with engaging and robust comments, by becoming members of or following the blog--monetary support allows us to spend more time writing around our day jobs.

I can't ever fully thank you or express how much a few dollars means. Right now, my efforts average out to somewhere between two and three dollars an hour on a really good day, so even the smallest donations are like mana from heaven. However, as insufficient as any such gesture is, and however "gauche" a rewards tier might seem, I still want to try to let everyone know in some feeble way how much you mean to me.

A few of you have "opted out" of this, assuring me that I don't need to send you a thank you note each time you donate. Though it is difficult, I will try. For the rest of you though, some small gesture seems the least I can do.


$1.99 or less - While I will never turn down any donation here (because I'm a wanton whore), I will just let you know that Paypal will be taking 30 cents per transaction, so denominations this low lose 15%+ of their value. I will make significantly less if you donated a dollar a month than if you just saved up and donated ten dollars a year.

Up to $50.00- All donors at this level will be sent a quick note of thanks to confirm receipt of their generous patronage, and will be included in a post at the end of each year thanking each donor for their support*. I will use only your first name as it shows up on your Paypal receipt. If you would like your full name to appear, or would prefer to be completely anonymous, please either mention so on your Paypal "note" or send me an email at chris.brecheen@gmail.com and let me know which donation to alter.

$50.01-$100.00-  All of the above.  In addition, I will include with the small note of thanks a few details about what's going on in my world, and what is coming up for the blog.

$100.01-$200.00-  All of the above. In addition, I will pick your brain about any updates you might like to see coming up in the future, and I will try to expedite that article in my mental queue. (Obviously this is more of a preference favoring than actual creative control, and I can't make any guarantees about time tables, but I will sure try.)

$200.01+- All of the above. In addition I will ask you about anything you generally would like to see more of and try to work that in more frequently.  (Again, I can't make creative or time-table guarantees, but I am likely to at least give it a try for a while.)


The Great Patron Muses-  There are a few great patron muses (but always room for one more). They have given more to Writing About Writing than I can possibly thank. Large monthly donations, unbelievable one-time donations, doing something totally amazeballs like show up to a convention wearing homemade Writing About Writing t-shirts, liking and sharing just about everything I post on social media, or generally just being beyond reasonable in their support of Writing About Writing. In addition to everything above, I have promised the Patron Muses that should I write a zombie apocalypse story (and there's definitely one rattling around in my brain) there will be characters based on them who might just make it to the helipad.


*While I would honestly and sincerely love to get back to every single donor with a personal message, there are just so many small donors, that trying to keep up with them has taken entire days of my writing time and left me with much less time to write.  Please know that I sincerely appreciate every one of you; however, I hope that you'll understand if my "thanks" in these cases is continuing to devote almost all my spare time to bringing you more Writing About Writing content.