Business-Ish Stuff (Updated for 2023)

I've been updating this for the past week or so and posting parts of it piecemeal, but here is the whole thing. Support Writing about Writing (even if you don't have money)? Our mission statement (yes, we have one)? Disclaimers? Update schedule? The comment policy? It's all here.

First and foremost: All written content on posts on this blog are copyrighted. If you would like to use any of my material, please quote a paragraph or two and link back to the URL, or contact me if you want to use a more extensive quote or cross post something (I'll probably say yes if it's not a brand new post). I consider any more than this a breach of copyright law. 

Pay the Writer- Do you want to get some money to the writer? My income is entirely donation based, so it's the only way I keep writing.

Mission Statement- Why is Writing About Writing even here?  What am I hoping to accomplish. And why am I so generous about giving all this free advice?

Disclaimery Stuff-  Am I using an image that belongs to you?  Did you find a grammar mistake?  Do you hate my computer-illiterate layout and formatting errors?

Update Schedule- How often can you expect an update? What gets posted on which days? Why was there no Wednesday post and just Chris doing Jazz fingers?

Comment Policy- Please check ahead of time what the policy is on comments--both why I may simply delete them and why I may put feature them in a future article. And why mean abusive anonymous comments get mocked more than mean signed ones.

Advertise on WAW- Technically speaking, I don't do advertisement, and it's going to take a pretty sweet deal to get me to try. I turned ads off as soon as my crowdfunding income could cover the bills (sort of––I still have a nanny side gig too). The sorts of ads Blogger and Google would stick on my page made me feel a little dirty. To date, I've only gotten spam offers, but if you actually have a product that I actually might be willing to endorse and a generous enough offer to make it worth my while, I will "sell out" a little. 

How Can I Support Writing About Writing?

Short answer: Pay the artist! 

Long answer:

Well, there's the obvious. Flowers. Chocolates. Promises you don't intend to keep.... 

I often get this question with caveat of "in ways that don't involve spending any money" so let me assure you that I do have an answer to this below. However, I can't stress enough how helpful money is. (2022 edit—and with medical bills for surgery all the cancer stuff approaching five figures even WITH insurance, I could absolutely use a hand.) So let me put this list in roughly the order of how useful/helpful/supportive each method is.

1- Sign up for an ongoing, monthly financial contribution (even just ONE dollar) through Patreon.

Simply put, nothing will contribute more to the ongoing survival of Writing About Writing, support the site more, or ensure future offerings of fiction and timely articles than will a few dollars that I can reliably count on month after month and use to budget. Also, nothing fuels an artists' or entertainers' sense of duty more than feeling like they have a patron's generosity to live up to. (There are days my patrons were the only reason I wrote a word.) Whether it is scaling back hours at my other job or being able to give this blog full-time energy, none of it will happen if I need to make ends meet from other revenue streams. I know not everyone has a budget for flinging money at online content creators, especially in today's economy, and I don't want this to come across like I'm besmirching the very methods of assistance that I mention below, but "Support your local artist," isn't just a slogan about pats on the back and encouraging emails. If you want any artist or entertainer to be able to go on creating and giving you the content you like, the very best way to do that is to make sure their rent stays paid and their electricity stays on, so that they aren't out selling Bluetooth smart bidets on commission when they could be making more of what you enjoy.

The easiest way to get me a regular financial contribution is through my Patreon. As little as a dollar a month helps me and will get you in on backchannel chats and polls. There are more rewards for higher commitments, but some really good rewards even at the lower tiers. I love my large donors, of course, but if one of them experiences a life hiccup, I could be down 5% of my income; so a hearty "ecosystem" of one, three, five, and maaaaaybe ten dollar donors is also beloved and incredibly valuable in the long run.

2- Make a one-time donation through Paypal.

Not everyone can give a set amount month after month, but yeeting money at the artist will still absolutely be the most supportive thing a supporting supporter can do to support. I hate to sound like a materialist, but writing is so much easier to do when the power isn't turned off.

A one time donation is easy through Paypal. Just look over to the left side for the conspicuously placed tip jar. I also have Venmo. 

Rarer, but not unheard of, are folks who want to set up an ongoing donation, but have no interest in Patreon or the reward tier system (for whatever reason); you can just click a box that says "Make this an ongoing donation."

I'm about to start a fundraiser for my medical expenses. (If you're catching up, I was diagnosed with cancer in November 2021, had surgery in December, and am currently in ongoing treatment.) Right now bills are pushing into the "low-five-figures" range. I'm starting to realize that on top of lost income, housing caregivers, and driving expenses, it's going to cap out pretty close to ten thousand. I'd like to do this independently of starting a separate Gofundme, but we'll see how it does. So far I've made about 20% of that in donations.

3- Exchanges/Creative Gifts

Of course money is the Swiss Army Knife of surviving capitalism. And with a normal, adult amount of bills (2022 Edit- And an abnormal amount of medical bills), it is the most useful support. However, people have "paid" me in all kinds of weird ways. They've given me gift cards. They've sent me complimentary tickets to events. They've sent me some of THEIR art (which I wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise). I even got someone's boudoir photoshoot once because they wanted to contribute, but couldn't afford to make a cash donation—I have to admit, THAT was pretty cool.  

4-Subscribe!

Success begets success. Big numbers attract attention and draw even more audience. More audience will widen the net for folks who might be able to afford to give a dollar or two. You can help me even if you don't have money to give yourself. If folks think their carefully written guest blog is going to reach 18 people, their attitude about contributing will be a little different than if they think it's going to reach 10,000.

Find all the ways to stalk me, and pick a few of your faves.

5- Share the articles you like on social media.

The hardest part about blogging is getting the word out. If I share a post on social media, it's all my same friends seeing it again and again. They all secretly (and some not so secretly) want me to shut up. Not everyone likes my style. Not everyone cares about writing. Not everyone can maintain their composure when it's time to use their scroll wheel. Finding my niche and those folks who really appreciate the work I am doing is tougher than running down a cephalopoid on foot (#23yearoldpopculturereferenceFTW), so helping push that process along is incredibly helpful. You have friends I've never met. Some of them might love what I do. It is an absolutely free and easy way to really help W.A.W. –– simply share the articles you really like on various social media in order to help me to find the narrow niche of people who like both what I'm saying and how I'm saying it.

They're out there...but I could use your help to find them.

6- Click the little buttons. A lot.

In today's world of web content designers and search engine competition, there is a "Red Queen Race" between content providers trying to figure out how to trick a search engine into listing them higher and search engines trying to make sure that what is high on a search isn't filler crap. Google is constantly coming up with new tricks to make sure someone who's just dropping keywords into a fluff piece doesn't end up as the first result of a search. One of the most effective ways to help an article get more traffic (by being a higher result on a search engine) is to do things like give it "Likes," "+1s" and "Thumbs Up." I'm not saying you have to click something you don't like, but if you want to help W.A.W., you might be just a little more generous with those endorsement buttons than for a normal site.

7- GIF party in the comments.

For reasons I don't fully understand, GIFs tickle the algorithm of most social media more than a like or even just a text comment. (Especially on Facebook, which is far and away my most traffic-generating social medium.) So if you want to see a post get proliferated (especially an appeals post that might net me a new patron or three), put a GIF on that post. 

8- Comment or drop me a line.

I am SO a real writer.
                                                                                              
Am so. Am so. Am so!!
                                                                                                    

It's a thankless job. I make barely enough to get by (if I give up my car, cell phone, and eating anything that isn't a PB&J or ramen) for fifty hours or so of work a week. There have been a deplorable lack of hawt groupie threesomes since ever. Most of the time, no one makes a comment unless they've got a problem with something I've written. And half the time, I get these anonymous nast-o-grams that are absolutely intended to make my cry like the Dawson's Creek meme. It's really nice to hear some of the good stuff from time to time whether it's just an article you particularly liked, or a general appreciation of my work.

It really does make a difference when I'm trying to get out of bed to write the next day.

Get Ready to Spend a Good Quarter of the Time NOT Writing (Personal/Meta)

The good news is, I mostly finished the admin fortnight. The bad news is, it took three weeks.

Now if you've been around for a while, you know that, for me, that's actually The Flash on Speed™ when it comes to my usual ability to get anything done in roughly the same time frame that I think I will. (Skyrim article, anyone?) And we definitely lost a couple of days to insurrection, attempted coup, and the subsequent writing I did around that. I'm really not THAT far off schedule. 

And yet here we are, and January is almost over. 

There are a couple of other admin posts coming. The best of 2020 and the adjusted best-by-month lists still need to be figured out. And there are a few people to thank. But everyone has been patient enough with me revising and posting the old tabs, so I think I'm going to dribble the rest in.

I've got some good stuff this week. Enough that I might even put a quick post up on Wednesday even though I just got through telling you that would never ever happen. There's a Facebook compilation post. I've got a great Mailbox question. And a good guest post is in the hopper for Friday. I'm going to really try to give you the ol' Razzle Dazzle for a couple of weeks. I prefer to kind of nail a good run of content before I pass the hat, but I lost a lot of Patrons over the last month, and I sure could use some financial support, so I'm going to be trying extra hard to show you what this baby can do when I'm flush in food and rent (and don't need that other job). 

But it brings up a good point about being a capital W "Writer." And I'm nothing if not here to wring a ham-fisted writing lesson out of my personal life. When you write for fun, you get to just write as much as you want. You never have to do anything but sit down and let the magic flow. You can involve yourself in the pixie dust and the fairy farts and never have to spend one day fixing the layout of your blog because you can't see the "Subscribe" button anymore, or two weeks carefully revising your various "standing posts" to make sure they accurately reflect both logistical truth and an evolving worldview. (Do you have ANY idea how many groupie threesome jokes I used to make when they were just absurdist jokes that could never really happen?)

However, when you make that transition from "this is fun" to "this is work" and particularly to "this is my DAY job, you're going to spend an ungodly chunk of time doing stuff that isn't writing. Just like in any job where you have to deal with admin or fill out TPS reports or sit in meetings that could have been emails or do staff development days or what-the-fuck-ever that isn't the actual job, writing isn't going to always be about writing––certainly not all about the parts of the creative process that you love.

I mean, I got to revise those articles (and some of that involved some creative effort and rewriting chunks of text), but I've spent almost 1/12 of the year now just dealing with blog stuff that didn't really FEEL much like creative writing. And when you add in how many hours a week I spend posting memes and things on FB so there's an audience for my work (or the unexpected days lost to managing the comments periodically when shit gets out of control) the ACTUALLY writing time shrinks further. Or replying to emails. Or how often I have to deal with Patreon. Or the three or four DAYS I spend rounding up receipts for all the weird income streams I have, so that I can do my freelancer taxes. Or even things like losing data, fixing formatting problems, trying to figure out enough HTML to be able to fix glaring errors like the background color of text. Or or or….

And you don't duck this beast just because you want to be traditionally published (or self-published without being laughed at). This isn't just a "blog thing." You're not just going to write all day and then pick up those sweet royalty checks from the mailbox. There's a lot of editing that isn't creative at all––just going back into your work with the suggested edits and just adding or subtracting commas. Or if I weren't promoting on FB, I might be walking up and down the streets trying to put my books on consignment. Or I might be doing literary events. Even if I were a household name, I might be doing junkets or book signings that last hours.

All in all, rough estimate….I'd say if you want to cross the divide between contented hobbyist who maybe makes enough to go out an extra time or buy a game for Switch each month and a working writer (even part time) who makes a significant portion of their income through wordsmithing, you should be absolutely prepared to lose about a quarter of your time to NOT writing. Some days are better than others, but then again sometimes you have an entire month where it seems like all you've done is polish your F.A.Q. and move around some commas.

Advice for Foreign Currencizers (Mailbox)

Creative commons.

What advice do you have for patrons who have to deal with a currency exchange rate?

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox." 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. And you never ever EVER need to apologize for "bothering" me with questions. After all what would The Mailbox be without them?] 

Becky asks:

Dear Mr Brecheen,

I'm so sorry to bother you, but I have a question about Patreon. After following and appreciating your blog for several years and managing one or two one-off donations, I finally plucked up the courage to subscribe to Patreon. I'm afraid it's only a tiny amount per month, and the reason I'm contacting you is that I have big doubts about how much of that tiny amount per month you are actually getting. I'm in France, you see, and obliged to connect Patreon to my French bank account. Patreon seems to be taking 3.08 euros a month, for you I presume, then there is a separate monthly "fee" of 0.48 euros. I just wondered if you had any advice how your other overseas subscribers did things, and if there was a more efficient way of doing it so that you get more of the tiny amount, rather than so much being lost to charges and currency conversion. Maybe it's a silly question sorry.

My reply:

Never a bother. Totally not silly.

You can call me Chris. Back when I taught English as a second language, I used to tell my students that if they said "Mr. Brecheen," I was going to turn around and look for my dad. That's not actually true because the Mr. Brecheen dad wasn't in my life much past my first birthday, and the other guy––who waited until I was 20 to give me the slip––didn't go by Mr. Brecheen. (The actual last time I heard "Mr. Brecheen" was a D/s roleplaying about a stern disciplinarian....um...you know, maybe another time.) Buuuuuut it always got a laugh and they called me Chris. Every once in a while, there would be someone from a culture who just could not wrap their head around treating an instructor with such familiarity, and we worked something out. I think my favorite was "Teacher Chris."

But I'm getting WAY off track... 

I'm going to start including some of the questions I get about Paypal, Patreon and such since this page is about the journey to writing as a career and crowdfunding (at least MY journey), and while these things take time and energy away from the magical unicorn rainbow farts of writing itself, they are also kind of the entire reason I can write 40 hours a week and be a working creative.

[The only question I'm never going to answer is exactly how much I make. The reason for this is that people who do not live here in the Bay Area––where a bedroom with a roommate runs from $800-$1000/mo on the cheap end (and $1500-$2000 if you live somewhere nice and/or central....and even MORE if you want to live in the city)––sometimes tend to get into this place where they think an artist is doing "well enough." I've actually had people tell me they were cancelling their monthly contribution, back when I shared the actual number, because they weren't forking over their hard-earned money to (and this is a direct quote) "keep me in the lap of luxury." I wish I could tell you how big the lolsob was on that one. I have a second job to afford a car/car insurance and anything beyond Spartan survival, and most of my local middle-class friends are pulling down salaries that are between 3 and 10 times my best month, so it can be unrealistic for someone––from a place where $600 gets you a one-bedroom place of your own and eating out is $10 a plate––to think they know how my budget works.]

Caveat made, let's get back to the question of foreign currency exchange. Patreon sent me this fifty zillion page terms-of-service agreement thing about foreign currencies, and naturally I didn't read a word of it before clicking "agree." However, shortly after, I started getting patron sign-ups in foreign currencies. Several of them in just a couple of weeks. So I think some people reading me from other countries were not able to join until that happened. 

So...that's a really good thing. I'm making more money. More money is good. Like anyone, I have to pay the bills, and like most everyone, my income is going down these days due to the pandemic and recession. As folks tighten their budget, the ol' "Crowdfunding Bloggers Discretionary Fund" is usually one of the first to take a hit. So if I can shore up some of what I'm losing with a few folks who couldn't send a few dollars my way before, that's awesome.

Because of this question, I did some digging and found that in addition to the usual Patreon fee, they take out 2.5% for currency exchange. I actually have no problem with this. Banks charge 1%-3%, so it's not like they're gouging. I think your credit card might be getting some of that as well. Everyone deserves a living wage, including payment processors, and Patreon is LITERALLY the reason I can be a working writer, so they've earned their cut. Yes, the service fee is 35 cents and that tends to mean, for my very small patrons, I'm actually only making a little over 50% of what they pledge, but I know that's as much as some people can afford, and Patreon employees gotta get theirs. Plus that 35 cents cuts less deep on a $3/month contribution and is not really even noticeable on anything over $5/month.

And if you want to talk about profit margins and who gets more of the money than the workers toiling away all day debugging code and stuff, you are absolutely right, but what you're really getting into is the suckitude of unfettered capitalism, and I really, honestly, can't do anything about the unethical ocean we're all swimming in by shopping around for crowdfunding payment processors. 

There's no payment process that won't take roughly the same amount, and short of mailing me checks* (which some folks actually do and I can provide a P.O. Box if that's something someone wants), I am never going to get everything someone sends me. That's just the cost of doing (very convenient electronic) business. Patreon isn't particularly evil in that regard, and in some ways they're better than most.

[*This goes for people sending money in $USD. Patreon would probably skim LESS off the top than a bank would to deposit a check in a foreign currency.]

One of the reasons I like Patreon is that within a certain latitude of cancelled or reduced contributions, it shows me how much I can count on each month and budget for. I have literally been able to say, "Yes I can afford that rent" in a couple of situations because Patreon gave me a sense of what I could expect for my monthly income. (It still goes up and down enough to make me anxious and unsure, but I can mostly count on it not to change more than 5% or so in a given month.) I might get a few cents on the dollar more for an every-three-months Paypal dump than I do for a Patreon signed up for a monthly contribution, but not knowing when and how much is coming keeps my finances in a state of flux and me in an anxious state of not knowing what to expect from month to month. 

Plus, I can just push a button and send out my reward to everyone in the relevant tier at once.

Now....Patreon doesn't get exculpated from ALL their bullshit because "capitalism." I am extremely annoyed about one thing: they shouldn't be charging YOU any of these fees. You should be charged only exactly what you sign up for (say $5), and if they need a fee, it should come out of my end (so that I make $4.75, not so you get charged $5.35). I even joined a massive protest campaign the last time they pulled it (and they backed off), but they apparently decided we wouldn't notice if they tried it again on foreign currencies. So they get 35 evil points there. One for each cent of their tainted money.

As far as ADVICE goes, I don't have any. It all adds up, and as much as I swoon at the names of my larger donors, my smaller donors absolutely form the bedrock of my income, and it is their contributions (aggregate) that I can count on not to disappear in a single fateful night. (Once someone who was giving me $100 a month had to cancel suddenly due to a life circumstance they could not possibly have foreseen. At the time that was a 15% pay cut.) Just give what feels good and comfortable and I'll keep writing enough that hopefully it'll add up. It's not the thirty-five extra cents Patreon takes as their pound of flesh that'll make or break me, but a few dozen more patrons from places who couldn't contribute before will absolutely make a difference.

Folks, I don't tend to make much ado about the Gregorian calendar ending (my big days are solstices and equinoxes), but I know many of you might. Also, tomorrow is a bank holiday, and there are far fewer people sitting around reading blogs about writing than usual. Plus this particular bank holiday involves folks with hangovers to nurse, and resolutions to make that are surely going stick THIS year; maybe even less blog reading.

So have a WONDERFUL new year. Stay safe. Maybe skip that Covid-filled party this year. And call a cab if you need to. And may our 2021 be the light at the end of this tunnel. I'll see you all on Monday. Bless.

Libraries vs. "Pay Authors" (....Wait. WHAT???)

Storytime!

Recently I posted a tweet encouraging people to use a library's audiobook program instead of Audible. 

Right. With me so far? Great.

I got all the "Usual Suspect" responses––the good advice like checking WHICH audiobook program your local library uses (they don't all use Overdrive), the typical "great taste/less filling" arguments about owning vs. borrowing, and the all-too-predictable breathtakingly privileged comments that inadvertently intimate that only people with financial means should be able to have access to books, usually by complaining that a six-week wait for a popular title means that libraries are less than useless (rather than just criminally underfunded). And I'm a guy who likes me some instant gratification, don't get me wrong.

Keeping up? Wonderful.

There was nothing surprising in about any of these reactions. I've been at this WAY too long not to have seen this all before. One was the sort of good "drill down" nuance you get when you post almost any kind of tweet. Because even at its vastly improved 280 characters, Twitter is where nuance goes to die. The other two were basically what you get when you post anything encouraging people to use libraries. Some folks with disposable incomes don't realize that not everyone is in the same boat and thus cannot actually make the choice to buy books as fast as they read. Those kind of comments are the cost of doing business if you want to talk about libraries.

No real surprises yet.

That's when the wheels came off the bus. I also saw a new "genre" of comments––folks having a reaction I completely DIDN'T expect.

"Or we could just pay the authors." "Actually, I like to support the authors." "It's better for the authors if you buy it."

Yeah, we should totally pay the......um–––

Wait. What?

This isn't just a weird take, or a predictably pro-corporation capitalist take. It's not your usual "If poor Jeff Bezos can't be a trillionaire while people die in the street, how will anyone ever be motivated to keep the engines of our industry turning faster than the commies'?" It is actually SO far off the rails, I can only assume it is based on some kind of bad information at some step in the process. So I'm here to give all of you the straight dope. Yes, we could pay the author, BUT......

Look at me. Look at me! Are you looking? 

I love that you want to support authors, but I absolutely positively promise you that libraries are completely fucking AWESOME for authors. Pinkie swear! 

Either these people dropping these comments don't know how libraries work or they don't know what a company like Amazon does to make money off of the efforts of writers. Fortunately, punching holes in this kind of shit is just exactly my wheelhouse as long as folks let me put on my snarkiest cestus before my pugilism of ignorance bashing begins. 

Also my sweatshop-caliber-overworked metaphors.

Paying the author is great, but libraries DO buy books from publishers, which gets authors paid.

Libraries buy books. In fact, libraries do not buy books at the same bulk discounts that book sellers do. They don't QUITE pay retail for most books, but it's pretty close*, and they certainly don't buy at the 40%-70% discount that retail outlets and book clubs get. They buy at least one copy of a book, pretty much if a person wants them to have that book. And any book that is going to have multiple people wanting to check it out every month is going to have a copy in pretty much every library in the English-language world. More than one copy for popular books. And every time a library wears out a copy of their book (unless the book is waning in popularity and they can pare down to fewer copies), they replace it by BUYING another copy. 

*Usually it's more like the same discount a bookstore employee might get. Although for some books they pay full retail price––often they have a fund set up to handle requests from their patrons.

That's potentially hundreds of thousands of books these libraries buy. There are roughly 150,000 public libraries in the English-language world (not including the sparser, but existent English libraries [or sections] outside the Anglosphere). 

You know what a GOOD run is for a fiction book? 25k. 50k is really good. 75k is spectacular. If a writer has a good enough book, JUST THE LIBRARIES of the world will double a "spectacular" run as they all race to get ONE copy of this in-demand book. (And if you're that popular, they're going to try to buy more than one.) Plus all those readers who take a chance on something they can borrow instead of buy (but then MUST own their own copy) will buy the book as well. 

Of course, most people who aren't Stephen King, she who shall not be named, or God never in their lives write a book that EVERY SINGLE library on Earth wants to get its hands on, and non-traditional publishers have the same marketing and distribution issues with libraries that they would with retailers, but libraries buy new books every day based on requests from those they service. So once an author has people who want to read their book asking libraries to carry it, they make money. 

And libraries pay licencing fees for each use of electronic media. Things like the audio file? The author makes some money. Same goes for e-books. The authors get a tiny royalty for every electronic checkout. And as e-books do not wear out, their prices are often higher for libraries to offset a longer shelf life. But on top of this, they have to "repurchase" the rights to them periodically (usually every one or two years).

Further, though an author may need a book deal with an international legal section, in many non-US libraries, there is something called a Public Lending Right, and that means you DO make money (pennies, but still) every time your book is checked out. 

Libraries are not pirating books. 

The arguments surrounding the "or we could pay the author" folks bear a striking resemblance to the arguments AGAINST pirating.

I have to be honest here. I'm elated, thrilled....OVER THE MOON that a new generation of up-and-coming writers knows to be very wary when they hear the word "exposure" used non-ironically in their presence; however, they also should know that exposure IS actually a thing. It exists, and it is good for authors.

Here's the trick. 

I'm going to tell you the difference between a pirate/thief downloading your book with a shrug of "I'm giving them good exposure!" (or a professional for-profit organization trying to get work for free out of a writer) and a library saying the same thing.

Ready? 

Here comes.

The difference is if someone is offering to pay you with ONLY exposure. 

The pirate/thief downloading torrents (instead of waiting a week for a request to come in at their local library) who has convinced themselves they're screwing the big, bad publishing company and not the author (it's both), and that they're providing the author with exposure (they almost never are), isn't paying for even a SINGLE copy of that book that they have. The library IS doing that. And unlike the pirate/thief, the library is also actually putting their copy of that book on display and giving it out to pretty much anyone who wants it (rather than just erasing it from their hard drive when finished). 

Now you're talking to a guy who will never publish traditionally because the big bad publishing companies really ARE big and bad, and who puts all his stuff online for free and passes the hat because he knows a lost cause when he sees one. But don't let the pirates/thieves convince you that they're really doing you a great big favor. They just don't want to feel as bad about picking an author's pocket. They've got this idea that they're going to go talk up enough people about that book that it'll get the author more money than if they'd never read it, but what usually happens is that they tell a few of their friends how THEY can pirate it. Their "exposure" myth is just what they tell the mirror as they brush their teeth for the evening so they can sleep at night. 

However, that's not what libraries do. They buy actual copies. Then they lend them out. Then they replace them as needed, which includes buying more copies if the book is popular. Then they notify other libraries of what's getting checked out, and THOSE libraries start buying copies. And the whole while, anyone who is legitimately checking out those books might develop an interest in having a copy for their very own or exploring the author's backlist. Plus the librarian might be recommending your book to people who come in asking about "suchandsuch" a genre with "soandso" of a style. 

Now THAT'S exposure. 

Paying authors is AWESOME, but comparing libraries with some rando just lending books willy nilly is a BAD analogy.

So you compare libraries to your friend who lends you a book but just assume they do it an extra thousand or so times, and totally screw the author.

Okay, right now, this analogy sucks. Let's look at it like this. 

Your friend lends out a book. If your friend notices that a lot of people are borrowing this book, they are likely to buy multiple copies of the book so they can lend them out to MORE people. Ten or fifteen copies wouldn't be unheard of for a very popular book. Your friend also replaces any books that become too tattered, whether they've lent it out fifteen times or once. Your friend also belong to a network of other book-lending friends who will also buy multiple copies. 

NOW your analogy doesn't suck. 

This is why we NEED libraries. Your friend would have to be outrageously wealthy and generous to pull this off in a non-sucky-analogy way. The collective resources of a community are the only way to create something like a public library without everyone having their own personal multi-millionaire friend invested heavily in their ongoing literacy.

Ask working authors what they think of libraries. NONE of them dislike libraries.

I am pretty sure you would be hard pressed to find even a fraction of one percent of working authors who have something negative to say about the way libraries affect their bottom line. Authors LOVE libraries. Even the most hard-line, mercenary, business-nosed author knows that they probably sell more copies of their book because of libraries than they ever would without them.

In a world where everyone had massive disposable income, an author (who I guess doesn't have the same massive disposable income as everyone else for some reason because that's what's required in this scenario) might prefer if every single person to ever take a chance on one of their books did so by purchasing their own copy, but given the world we live in where there are people who can't buy books or only a couple at a time as a treat, public libraries exist precisely because books should not belong only to those people of sufficient enough means to have their own personal libraries. Public libraries exist to democratize literature and information as something that all humanity (not just the wealthy) deserve. And they are part and parcel with the reason the modern day writer can be "the modern day writer" instead of having a wealthy patron among the courtiers. 

The ones treating authors poorly are EXACTLY who you would expect to.

If authors aren't making enough in late stage capitalism, I hate to say it, but it's not the LIBRARIES that are to blame*. (And it's certainly not all the plebs who used the library rather than buying every book they read brand new.) If you want to see who is mistreating authors, look at Amazon (and don't forget the publishers). Price fixing, denying authors their "commission" unless the Audible subscription came from a certain URL, slashing royalty rates, denying more and more money to the author whether you go big five or independent because the entire industry landscape is dotted by various distribution monopolies. They're Kaiju trying to smash each other's market share and authors get trampled underneath. 

*Confession time: I didn't hate to say this at all, really.

But it sure as hell isn't by LIBRARIES hurting authors. If you want to see a library contribute some scrill to an author, it's as easy as walking up to the desk and asking them if they will order that author's book. I think they also make you fill out a tiny little card. 

Very few donated books end up on a library's shelves.

Some of the confusion seems to surround the book drives libraries have. And while I can't speak for the shoestring budget of every small town library in the world, most do not need two hundred copies of Fifty Shades of Grey (especially not the ones where some of the pages between 318 to 329 are extra tattered). Libraries are generally limited by space. That's why unless you have a PRISTINE copy of a book they were going to buy anyway, they usually turn around and have a book sale, using the money to buy more books.....from authors. 

Libraries are not stopping you from buying books. 

We never voted as a society to have bookstores OR libraries, and the effort to edge out libraries is coming from bookstores, not the other way around. It's true that libraries are a sweet little drop of socialism in our late-stage crapitalist coffee, but if you are brimming over with concern for the plight of the poor working writers, I can't tell you enough how much trying to get universal basic income or a federal "artist stipend" for working writers (or just giving us money) will help more than attacking libraries. Amazon and other booksellers are the ones who want you to think libraries aren't good for authors, and gee I wonder why*?

*I don't really wonder. It's because they're lying greedy fuckwaffles lying through their lying face-holes to secure a bigger market share.

As if paying authors OR enjoying libraries is what's really on the table when corporations like Amazon are doing everything in their considerable-PR-spin power to destroy any competition they might have, including calling for the end of libraries. (That link is to those pinko liberals over at Fortune magazine who even think that's a pretty shittastic idea.) And honestly....fuck them for trying because this entire post is JUST about authors making money; it doesn't even touch on everything else public libraries do like help with government forms, job applications, community gatherings, or just kicking ass for free speech.

Libraries are good. 

Libraries help authors.

Libraries BUY authors' books.

Libraries are not the enemy.

Why Are You So Hard on Yourself? (6 Lessons for the Would-Be Working Writer)

One of the most common questions I'm asked by friends, loved ones, folks who follow my Facebook, my Patrons sometimes, and those of you here who pay closeish attention to the meta of my writing life is why I am so hard on myself. Why do I write so much? Why am I constantly pushing myself, even in the midst of global pandemics, to be more prolific? Why do I worry about my "productivity" when that is a capitalist construct? Why?

These questions have ramped up during Covid and the Shelter In Place rules as I've dealt with a particularly fractured attention span, incredible difficulty writing full articles day after day, and the guilt associated with falling behind on the pace that I usually expect of myself.

These are valid questions. They're worth answering. Let me get my pen. (By which, of course, I mean I shall continue typing on my computer.)

However, before we proceed to the unpacking, I want to share another common theme of questions I get EVEN MORE than the questions above. In fact, other than "Is anyone sitting here?", this (these) are the questions I get the most from strangers. It is also overwhelmingly the most common question I get from folks who like my blog but don't really follow it. From friends who know I'm a writer, but don't pay attention to my work. From any audience I sit in front of, no matter what I'm there to talk about. And from aaaaaaaalmost any aspiring writer who finds out that I scrape out a paycheck from writing upon which I could live if I didn't insist on living in the Bay Area and eating brand name frozen waffles. These questions go like this: "How did you make it as a writer?" "How can I make it as a writer?" "What did you do to break in?" "How have you managed to make writing your job?" 

And while one of my ongoing struggles is threading the needle between self-care and pushing myself, and while I absolutely don't want to make light of workaholism so severe that if I'm not paying attention, it will approach self-harm levels, I do not believe for an instant that these two things are unrelated. Keep this in mind going forward. Because it's important to understand that when I give myself a hard time and apologize and promise to do better, I'm only OSTENSIBLY doing so to my patrons. 

It's really me I'm talking to. It's really that driving passion of an artist to create. That part that has nothing at all to do with "productivity as a capitalist construct" and everything to do with "I must keep creating like a shark has to keep swimming."

People being too hard on themselves is a problem. (And believe me, my doctor told me I was going to kill myself from heart disease if I didn't start seeing it AS a problem.) Unrealistic expectations hurt our self-esteem when we're NOT enduring a collective cultural trauma. We have to be kind to ourselves. We have to self-care. We have to manage our expectations. 

But also a problem is basically giving oneself a pass. ("Eh, collective trauma. Whatryagonnado?" "Capitalism is a scam. Whatryagonnado?") Believing one's own bullshit. Buying one's own excuses. Avoiding work because "self-care." Wondering why one is not a published author after years––YEARS––of writing two or even three times every month. 

I think most people struggling with "the air/fuel mixture" are being way, way, WAY nicer to themselves than will get them to their hopes and dreams, and that the people with careers folks want to emulate almost always have "overdoing it....at least a little" in common.
There's a needle that needs threading, and I'm not saying I'm threading it, but I know it's there. 

Lesson #1- If you have goals, you can't be too easy on yourself. You may have to put in some long hours and weekends when you're still working a day job and writing.

Okay, now onto the response.....

FIRST OF ALL, YOU'RE GODDAMNED RIGHT.  

I work too much. I have a few of.....let's call them "issues" that surround writing.

One of them is that I love it, so I hardly think of it as working. (Or it involves being online which I consider "fucking off," so even though it's work directly related to maintaining a Facebook page or networking, it clocks on my internal odometer as "wasted time.") This creates problems when I wake up, write for five or six hours and then go to my second job where I nanny children for five or six hours. Problems like......I come home and wonder why I'm so tired or why a "part time" day kicked my ass so hard.

You're probably already thinking, "But Chris, that's a 10-12 hour day."

Congratulations, dear reader, you are already making better life choices than I usually do.

Lesson #2- Don't be like Chris. (He needs to turn it down from 11 and learn to have some fucking chill.)

Another problem that works against me is how often I forget the little things. I sometimes spend an hour writing a Facebook post reacting to a news article or just trying to frame something so that maybe––just maybe––my fellow white dudes might GET it. Often I fall into the trap of considering that "fucking off on Facebook" and not "buckling down and doing some 'real' writing." 

I also get really stuck in the idea that only certain topics COUNT. I have several totally-FINISHED articles that I could put. And I mean I have dozens of them and they are absolutely final-draft finished. I could put them up for weeks while I let incredibly well-paid fruit dispensers feed me grapes on a beach (right now, from six feet away with a grape launcher). I would enjoy the impossibly white sand and implausibly sapphire water. But I worry that those articles don't "count" towards what people want to see because they are too focused on politics or too rooted in a culture war issue like guns or too this or too that. So I trickle them in when I feel like I've done "enough" on the other writing that I believe people are tuning in for. Which, of course, is a goal that I almost never hit: "enough." And that means all that writing effort is just sitting in the wings as I turn around and write something else that "counts."

Lesson #3- It's really easy to get a sense of "Give the audience what they want" and "Keep them coming back for more" and lose a sense of what YOU want to be doing as an artist. Especially if you're right on the edge between making enough and not.

As if all that weren't enough, I also suffer from the very common, very-normal-for-artists imposter syndrome, and I tend to believe that if I'm not writing "enough," people will see through me. So while I have tons of "filler" posts I could drop or more fun things I could do like check in on the "WAW Staff" ––and perhaps most importantly, IT IS STUFF I REALLY WANT TO BE WRITING––I feel like writing little posts like this wouldn't "count," and people would see through me, and become disenchanted. So I tend to believe I've "earned" these more fun and frivolous posts after I've knocked some good ones out of the park. 

Again with the "enough."

So the first thing I have to do is cop to this accusation of "working too hard." You're right. I work too much. I'm too hard on myself, probably when I don't need to be. Between my personal insecurities, financial insecurities, and artistic insecurities, I am absolutely constantly trying to "prove myself."

Lesson #4- Writing is work. Even if you enjoy it. Promotion is work. Networking is work. Its ease compared to nannying two kids doesn't make it NOT work.

BUT....

YOU MAY NOT CARE (AND FUCK, I LOVE YOU FOR IT), BUT SOME DO

When I have a bad month––and by that I don't mean a month where my fee-fees get repeatedly hurt by cute girls who stop texting me, I mean a month of low productivity––I lose patrons. I might not lose all of them, and let me take a moment to clearly shout from the rooftops that those who are patient while my productivity goes down are wonderful. 

But some do go. 

And sometimes the exit "interviews" they fill out even say shit like, "You don't update enough for me to pay for this" or "You were writing more when I signed up."

Sometimes they tell me my politics suck and I'm the real bigot, and I think, "How did you even end up here?" but that's probably off topic for this article.

Now, before you clutch your pearls, I should nuancify this. Most people who cancel or lower their monthly contribution clearly do so because of their financial situation. They sometimes tell me or leave a note or fill out the exit interview with apologies (which I should take a moment to say here, as someone on a shoestring budget, I totally understand). Still....some definitely have a thing or three to say about how they've ALSO noticed I'm having a bad month.

And all that and $2.19+tax would buy me a single serving bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. By which I mean that people do leave. And maybe they just have a coming-to-budget moment when they notice they haven't seen a good article in a while, or maybe they just don't want to hurt my feelings so they make something up, but a shitty month correlates pretty reliably with me losing around 5% of my income. And believe it or not, if I have two bad months in a row, that pay cut happens again.

I don't know what your life and paycheck look like, but you probably wouldn't want to go too easy on yourself if you knew it were going to mean a pay cut every month.

Lesson #5- Most patrons will support artists through some tough times. Some won't. Unless you can afford to lose the ones that won't, don't go TOO easy on yourself.

I WOULDN'T HAVE LAURELS TO REST ON (EVEN FOR A MOMENT––EVEN IN A GLOBAL PANDEMIC) IF I HADN'T WORKED THIS HARD.

The reason I'm where I am, with hundreds of patrons telling me to chill the fuck out and take care of myself, is not because I spent the last eight years tossing up a couple of good posts a month. These folks know I'll be "back" (probably with a trilogy, two hundred articles, and some sort of beard) in a fan-fucking-tastic year of productive utopia because I have established a credibility as a prolific writer (and a massive body of works). I wouldn't be making enough to (barely) scrape by if I had given myself a day off every time I wanted one. (Although I probably should have been a little kinder to myself on at least a FEW occasions. See above.)  I wouldn't have the patrons who DO have faith in me during my slow times if I didn't have a well-established reputation. Frankly, I wouldn't be making as much if I wrote significantly less.

Lesson #6- There's a LOT of content between you and a robust patronage who will have patience through your difficult times.

I know it's shitty to realize that you probably won't establish a writing career if you don't overdo it at LEAST a little, and everyone has to find their own peace with that and their personal strategy for surviving capitalism. Probably most people you ever knew who were fantastically good at something overdid it a little. Had long days. Worked weekends. Gave it more gas than the folks who wanted a functional work/life balance and a robust set of complementary priorities. And while you absolutely want to make sure you know that writing (or art of any kind) is work even when it feels like it isn't, and that you factor in enough self-care to safeguard your health both physical and mental, you also have to understand that you are your own "boss" when it comes to writing, and your ambitions are directly tied to just one fucking metric asston of hard work. 

Self-Care, Brutal Honesty, Self-Deception, and the Writer Who Wants to "Make It" (Personal Update, Meta)

This is not a complainy post! 

As you can probably imagine, I've heard some variation of "Maybe you should take it easy" quite a bit lately. My schedule has been packed ever tighter as baby's nap time shortens and kid two needs after-school supervision. I stay late to do a few chores almost every night, and at least once a week there's some additional glut of hours––either a late night where I do bedtime or a few hours on the weekend where I tag in for a few so mom and dad can do some deep cleaning or other chores. I was stretched a lot thinner than I looked on paper. Then there was the boat fire that killed my friends and there was the threat of wildfire that caused PG&E to kill the power. As well as no shortage of things like trips to Disneyland (where, yes, it's Disneyland and Disneyland is squeeworthy fun, but I'm also doing all the driving, bedtimes, games in line, and watching to make sure those distracted moments don't turn into lost children "incidents").

All of this happens in the backdrop of a job writing that usually takes 30-40 hours a week. If I wrap up everything at 50 hours, it feels a bit like a mini-vacation. I'm usually tumbling into bed on Sunday after clocking in something a little closer to 60 or 70.

But this is NOT a complainy post.

As a living demonstration of writing, this blog has its ups and definitely its downs. The past couple of months have only been rivaled by the cancer and breakup of 2016. Keeping up with my own posting schedule (and sometimes even my "plan B" posting schedule has been tough). A lot of people have pointed out that it's okay to miss some posts and take it easy and take some time off. I've gotten some of the most kind and compassionate emails even from huge long-time donors imploring me to please take care of myself and take a few days or even a week or two away from the blog. They've talked about self-care. They've talked about mental health. They've talked about how it is capitalism that is tricking me into this perception that I have to stay "productive."

They're right. They're also not right. Great taste. Less filling. Soup. Meal.

I mean they are correct in every sense of what would be good for me and how we all internalize social messaging about "productivity," but I also cannot change the rules of the world I live and write in. Not today. I think about it as a writer who has carved out just enough income to survive (but needs a side gig for health insurance and to have a cell phone). I do believe this need to be ever more productive is killing most people in late-stage capitalism as our bosses get richer but our incomes stagnate. We're working more and more side gigs and hustling and working from home and answering just one more work email and and and.....  An increasing number of us have taken on far more than any "forty-hour week" (itself an arbitrary and moralistic measure of productivity from Henry Ford), all this just to keep our heads above water––not because we've become obsessed with a lifestyle of consumption. When that is the reality of the world we live in, it can be calming and validating but also incredibly dangerous to disregard.

I think about this a lot. I mean, I think about this a LOT. 

I don't just think about it as a writer working in this world or as a human watching the world change fundamentally from the one I grew up in. But I also think about this as the writer who has decided to take on writing a blog that is a living example of how to "make it" as a writer. I could make a few choices, roll the dice, and take my chances. I have amazing peeps who won't let me fall, and as long as I'm willing to cook and clean and my clients are two full-time professionals with two kids, some chronic pain, and more money than free time, I may have more hours than I can handle at times, but I will never have fewer than I need.

But it's not just me out here. Okay, that's not true, but I'm also sensitive to my Mission Statement here at Writing About Writing. I can't just give you all the advice to find rich tech money folks who need domestic labor and ride its coattails. ("That's how to be a writer. *drops the mic* "Goodnight!") I would if that were a feasible life choice for everyone, and I hope that at least you all are getting a good impression for how long you're going to have to write while working some side gig (if you don't mind being pretty poor) or day job (if you'd like brand-name frozen burritos). For most of the world, working and writing is going to be several years of long, tough hours and as the writing takes hold and starts to generate income, there IS going to be a point where one realizes that more "self-care" and "taking it easy" and "not succumbing to the ravages of capitalism" will also hurt one's writing career.

Let me make sure I put that in flashing neon on the scrolling marquee:

There IS going to be a point where one realizes that more "self-care" and "taking it easy" and "not succumbing to the ravages of capitalism" will also hurt one's writing career. 

You've got to write. You've GOT to write. You've got to keep writing, and if you don't, the reality of the world we live in will be there. If you don't write on the regular, prose can decay. Craft becomes rusty. It's harder to fill a page because you're out of practice. But even from a strictly pragmatic point of view, you have less writing that is ready to go. And if that's your bread and butter, you're going to end up with self-care instead of the rent. (And I think there are very few of us who would be able to pay our landlord by inviting them to join us in a tea-infused bubble bath.) That includes the writers for whom it IS a more traditional job like freelance writers or tech writers. They don't get to call their boss more than once in a while and talk about "self-care" or "late-stage capitalism." If they use up all their days off, they get written up or fired. If they are a freelancer, they can't blow off deadlines and maintain a professional reputation or just not take jobs day after day.

Do I like being beholden to this system? Fuck no. Would I love a world with Universal Basic Income enough that my writing could be more quality than quantity? Yes. Would I thrive if I made enough money that I could post a little less and write fiction a little more? Absolutely. Would being able to watch The Contrarian only as his Uncle Chris a couple of times a week instead of as a nanny/side gig/hustle/need-the-money mean that my writing got nearly twice as many hours of my creativity? It would.

But that is not the world I live in.

(Also, this is not a complainy post.)

It's not just about the money either. It's about the writing––the craft. Stephen King writes ten pages a day. JK Rowling starts at eight hours a day and goes up from there. Murakami works for five to six hours each morning. Vonnegut scheduled some breaks, but basically worked from 5:30 a.m. to noon. Maya Angelou would get up before six, go to a hotel room she rented by the month, and work all day. Barbara Kingsolver wakes up at four, writes until her kids need attention, and then gets back to it after she gets them off to school. There is virtually no writer you can think of whose writing makes you swoon who doesn't write like it's an important job to them.

Lord knows I don't always get that air/fuel mixture right. I know I err on the side of overwork. I've been to therapy about it. I dived into workaholism after my last big break up, and I'm in recovery. I was clacking away like I was "Fine. Just fine. This is fine." a few days after my friends died while I was living in their house. (Morgan Freeman's narrator voice: "He wasn't fine.") I'm NOT the person you want to model this after.  But I am the person to tell you that there is absolutely a needle to thread. Too many self care days, and you won't be getting paid. Too many "take it easy" indulgences, and you don't have your book written. And breaks beget breaks*, when it comes to NOT writing in a way that has been observed by too many folks to dismiss.

*Sometimes beget breaks beget long breaks beget hiatuses beget "I should get back to that someday" beget some clever line like "Either these interminable writing breaks go or I do!"

I think most of the people on your bookshelf and almost all the working writers you might know overdo (or overdid) it...at least a little. That's why they are on your bookshelf. That's why they're the best. When most people chose to take it easy, they went back to the page for another hour. Like the best athletes, or the best musicians, they got where they were by working when most people called it a day. I'm not trying to excuse some of my more unhealthy habits, but....well maybe I am sort of trying to excuse a few of the less unhealthy ones.

There are a lot of wonderful things that happen when a writer finds an audience. I love mine. Oh, sweet strawberry blintzes, do they ever make me feel warm and fuzzy, especially when I'm having a shitty day. They are amazing people, some I recognize day by day and some strangers to me, who have come to see me as a human who deals with good times and bad. And they care if I'm overdoing it. They tell me not to worry if I take a day off––they'll be here. Or they remind me that from the other side of the equation, a day where I post a couple of reruns would hardly even be noticed.

They are the best.

So let me make sure I also tell you about the cold, bullshit, capitalist, end of this equation that is separate from these wonderful people who I would line up for hugs, high fives, and/or cheek kisses if I could. These fine humans with their nurturing, validating, and altruistic reminders come from both folks who support me financially and folks who don't, but when it comes to the former, my best guess as a casual observer is that they amount to about 90% of my patronage.

Which means there's roughly another 10%. They are the cranky demandy-pants folks in my inbox who have LOTS of things they want to say about what and how often I should be writing.

What I'm telling you as a writer making money writing is that it does matter that I push myself. My income fluctuates when I am not writing as much, as well, or as consistently. 

No one ever says, "Post or I'm out," but a few just quietly leave. Or they quietly lower their monthly contribution. I know that this happens for many reasons and the correlation doesn't equal causation in every case. (And obviously I would never put someone on the spot--most people cancel because their financial situation has changed.) However, it is impossible not to notice that this happens almost any time I am in a slump. And when I'm posting at a clip, I PICK UP patrons faster than when I'm having a rough go of it.

Cold. Hard. Financial reality. Can't escape it. I lose money when I don't post. I gain money when I'm prolific. Period.

Now I'm telling this to you, the writer who wants to "make it," because you don't have a boss who is going to say "You've taken a lot of time off lately, Brecheen." You don't have a supervisor who is going to say "I'll have to write you up if you use another sick day before next month," or a manager who will laugh if you start to talk about a mental health day. You won't get an annual performance review or be up for a promotion. If you're like me, you have 240 bosses, and most of them are going to tell you to take it easy.....while others quietly give you a pay cut.

And there it is.

A working writer has to think hard about when to take breaks and for how long. They have to be brutally honest, not just about their own ambitions and how much work it can take to get to and stay at the top of one's game, but also about how their output will suffer. And in this world, right now, that output is directly linked to income. Rowling and King and Williams and Martin could probably STOP WRITING without needing to worry about the rent, but when one is just scraping by, the equation is different.

*voice trembles a little* But this is not a complainy post.

Writing Query Letters (The Very Basics)

So today's post is a bit of a hybrid between a frequently asked question and something I can link to when I'm talking about query letters (that isn't part of a longer mailbox question). So here are The Very Basics™ on writing a query letter to an agent.

You should query after your fiction is in its final form, and you can query multiple agents simultaneously, but agents have "brands" and "niches" that they work best in, so think of picking out six or eight that you imagine would be a good fit with your writing and your specific piece rather than spamming all of them. (They are likely to find out, and this is considered a bit unprofessional.) You don't want to send your zombie page-turner query to the agent who deals mostly in literary fiction and poetry.

A query letter should be formal, concise, and impeccably professional. It should never be informal or familiar in tone ("Hi there, brah! Lemmie tell you about your next best seller!" ––ROUND FILE!), and it should never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever EVER be more than one page. (Please fucking trust me on this one. I have known agents who go through their stack of query letters and literally throw out everything with a staple. ––ROUND FILE!) Even in today's market when most submissions are electronic and sans staple, a word rolling over onto the second page is all she wrote. (For that agent, anyway.) Agents get dozens, sometimes hundreds of query letters every week. If you can't even follow the most basic directions, they're not going to want a professional relationship with you. Also, don't get cute with the font sizes or the margins. You're dealing with professionals––they can tell.

Before I talk about the query letter, I want to make one thing absolutely crystal clear. Like mountain lake after a spring thaw crystal clear where there are fucking snow-capped mountains in the distance, your face is about to freeze off, and the light sparkling off of everything is a razor blade across your pupil. Do you get how clear I want to be?

DO NOT SEND A QUERY LETTER BEFORE YOUR BOOK IS DONE.

Just don't.

In non-fiction, there is something called a proposal which you can write before you're done if you query with a table of contents and sample chapters, but in fiction, you need to be sitting on a final project––that's "final" as in the most edited, most proofread, most revised project you are capable of creating. Not a few chapters. Not a first draft. Not "still needs some cleaning up." Done. An agent who asks to see more and finds out you're not done will ROUND FILE your query and probably put your name in the "Do Not Reply" section of their rolodex for the future.

The number one mistake in query letters is that the book isn't done. The number two mistake is that the letter is over a page. About 80% of query letters break one or both of these rules. If you follow them, you're already in the top 20th percentile. Rock rock on Cheat Commando.

What do you mean this is from fourteen years ago?
Shut up!

Paragraph one is the hook to your story. Describe your book like you would to someone you met on a subway who was about to get off at the next stop. Or better yet someone who was about to do their first unassisted parachute jump. This isn't the place for plot points beyond the basic description. In storytelling terms, use one clause to describe "the mundane world" and one clause to describe the inciting event. ("Chris couldn't hook up a threesome to save his life until one day he met a pair of gothic lingerie models who loved blogs about writing.") Be careful of making it as formulaic as I have here, but that is the basic idea. This is also the place to mention setting, or any stylistic decisions you've made that you think are very unique. (They won't be–unique that is–which is why I used "very" in front of it, but if you think they are, include that.)

Paragraph two is a brief synopsis. Let me say this again with the proper emphasis. Paragraph two is a MOTHER-FUCKING BRIEF synopsis. Brief. Hear me on this. Brief. If your whole query letter is over a page (which will get it ROUND-FILED) it will probably be because you are trying to introduce too much detail into your synopsis. You don't need to tell the agent the whole story, just get them interested. This may actually be some of the most difficult writing you've ever done, and it matters greatly because this is what the agent is going to focus on. Summarizing is hard. (That's why they still teach it in college English classes.) Don't worry about "spoilers" in this paragraph. Summarize the whole thing (albeit briefly).

Paragraph three is about you as a writer. Degrees you hold. Places you've published. If you don't have a lot of that, increase the length of your synopsis (paragraph two) but don't bullshit your way through this. You're dealing with professional bullshit sniffers who have epic reading skills. Don't even bother. An agent doesn't care about your job (unless you're writing a story about that job). An agent doesn't care about your education (beyond what you got a degree in). If you have a lot of writing accolades, keep it to a few that you're most proud of, and keep it short. Journalism publications, awards or contests you've won, or literary publications.

Lastly, don't forget to thank them for their time and attention and to tell them the full manuscript is available on request. (And make sure that is true.)

It's a LOT of information for a single page, and it will not be easy. Be ready to spend a couple of days on this. It may seem arbitrary and unfair, but it gives the agent a very quick assessment of your story, your writing skill, and your ability to follow directions. Remember that an agent is deciding whether or not to enter into a professional relationship with you where you might need to make revisions on a deadline or approve proofs in a time crunch. If the first thing they see is that you can't (or won't) follow directions, you're off to a poor enough start that they won't proceed.

Oh, and one bit of not-necessarily-vital-but-probably-useful advice: don't query during or right after NaNoWriMo. Basically any time after NaNoWriMo starts until January or February. The market is simply FLOODED with bad queries, early drafts that people think are brilliant, and (though I have mixed feelings about NaNo itself) lots of pretentious writers. NaNo is such a phenomenon that the entire industry reacts for MONTHS by becoming salty and extra cynical, and the last thing you want is to face down a cranky agent who is sick of everyone's shit by 8:07 in the morning. Do yourself a favor and shoot for March at the earliest and October at the latest.

Writing, Money, Capitalism. The Little Stuff. (Mailbox)

How can someone in the writing industry survive capitalism while doing what they love? 

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer each Friday.  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 576% here for questions so long that they do the heavy lifting of a post and let me make a shorter answer.] 

Deva asks:

Hi Chris,

I’m a longtime reader and fan, lifelong writer, and very recently a writing professional. Easily my favorite part of writing consultation and editing is having the opportunity to help people ask for the things they need and want-- grant writing, resume workshop, scholarship applications, petitions and letters, advocacy campaigns, etc. This work is even more fulfilling when I am able to do it for someone who *really* needs it and most especially rewarding when it is connected to any sort of cause meant to serve others. If I didn't need to eat or sleep or drink water (or pay for the privilege of living), I would spend every minute of every day doing this kind of work. That's the dream.

Enter Stage Right, CAPITALISM:

In the professional world, I've found that the more financial security I gain, the fewer people I am able to help in this way. I am grateful to be at a place in my life where I am truly scraping by instead of falling further behind, but I cannot yet afford to offer up my skills as a writing consultant for free. 

I've figured out that I can scale back on my hours at my full-time job and take on a few clients and projects at a very affordable rate. But I can't figure out how to ethically accomplish this without undercutting my colleagues. Do you have any thoughts on how I (or how we as a community of writing professionals) can make our services more accessible and still make a living*? And is it possible I'm overthinking this? Do these concerns of "undercutting the competition" only apply if my goal is to be competitive? Is it enough to say that my little labor-of-love "side hustle"  won't *really* affect the market?

Alternative question if there isn't a good or interesting answer to what I outlined above: are there any service-oriented writing careers that I have missed?

Any insight would be appreciated :)

My reply:

Just as a point of logistics, if anyone else is hoping to hop the queue this May and get a question answered right away, it's a long, tough month for me, and it will help if you do a huge question that does a lot of heavy lifting and lets me pop off a pretty brief answer that still feels like a full post.  

Congratulations on discovering what you love within the industry. I know a lot of people get so fixated on being A Novelist™ that they aren't willing to adjust course to go after what brings them far more bliss. So now all we need to do is figure out how you can do what you love, survive capitalism, not undercut your industry colleagues, test the waters of other kinds of service-oriented writing, seize the means of production, cast off the yoke of our oppressors, abolish bourgeois private property, and solve climate change in the next decade before humanity goes extinct or at the very least, civilization as we know it completely collapses in an extinction-level event that kills billions and renders most of the world uninhabitable.

Easy peasy.

The first and most important thing you can do is know your value. I'm not kidding. Walk through the world with your default setting being: "Fuck you. Pay me." I know a lot of your questions have to do with doing things pro bono or for a big discount, but knowing exactly what you are giving someone when you work for free is the most important thing you can do when interacting with the forces of capitalism. If you are trying to figure out how philanthropic it is to charge someone $10/hour, the answer is different if you are worth $20/hr than if you are worth $50/hr. And knowing that is important in making certain decisions. The basic core principle here is that there's a difference between donating labor that you know has value and letting yourself be taken advantage of.

Are you undercutting your colleagues? First of all, not really. You, Deva, are not somehow going to go out there and change the market value of freelance writing with your own personal philanthropy. Maybe, maybe, maybe in a world before the Internet you might have been able to impact a local market by always working for free, but....not really.

And also consider that as long as you're talking about folks or orgs legitimately helped by you working for a little less and not Jeff Bezos convincing you he'll get you free Amazon Prime for a year and some awesome exposure, consider that anyone itching to charge these folks is not super high key the type you need to worry about.

"How could you edit that cleft palate orphanage's webpage for their help-us-not-go-bankrupt auction for only $20/hr. I was going to make FOUR TIMES that and overbill them. You....UNDERCUTTER!"

In a broader sense, though? Well, this is one place where knowing your value matters. If you are letting yourself be hired by slick-ass rich folks who absolutely COULD pay for the work, but just want to be able to sing a song about "exposure," you ARE undercutting your colleagues. The entire writing industry––and really the entire CREATIVE industry––has been so saturated by writers (artists) willing to devalue themselves for "exposure" that it is NOTICEABLY harder to get a paying gig. To this very day people slide into my PMs thinking that I might work for no pay and "ground floor opportunities," and they get genuinely OFFENDED when I won't budge from my freelance rate.

"Why should I pay you if I can just get some other writer to do it for free?"

And there it is! And yes, it hurts me. Maybe not ME me because I don't do a lot of freelance, but the universal me. Everyme.

The industry is steeped in this assumption, and that sense of entitlement from those who would otherwise be paying clients hurts everyone. If writers, as a whole, would just appreciate not only their actual labor value but the value of the training that got them to their current skill level, we would all get paid a lot more. Although I will say that, in general, the people who have money but try to weasel out of it by citing "exposure," are exactly the sort who would try to rip off independent contractors and freelancers in other ways. So I wouldn't work for Trump even if you get him to agree to your freelance rate.

So you do have to be aware of not giving away your value to folks who could otherwise pay you.

But it's pretty easy to just not do this. 

If someone can pay you, charge them. You know what you're worth and if they have money to give you, you're all trying to survive capitalism. TAKE their money. You deserve it. This is very important both to yourself, your self-respect and self-esteem, and also to your colleagues.

If they can't afford to pay you, things get interesting. Now you get to decide if you want to essentially GIVE them $X/hr (in the form of your labor) for whatever cause or interest they're working on. And most of them are going to open with things they CAN do. (Like a non profit can give you an invoice for what you are worth [again, know what you're worth] that you can use as a tax deduction.)

I charge $50 an hour for most people who want me to content or line edit something or write something for them (I don't do proofreading). But actually, I'm worth a little more than that. And if Bill Gates or Google wanted to hire me for some god-only-knows why reason, I'd quote them $75/hr and start with a consult hour where I tell them what I like on my bagels (lox, capers, cream cheese, and cucumbers for sure). But for most mere mortals, I go down to $50. I know how expensive freelance work can be for folks who aren't independently wealthy or have the backing of a major corporation.

Major Corporation!
(Yeeeeaaaah, this joke might be funnier in person.)

And sometimes my friend who works part time at the Shakespeare theater and who also wants to be a writer asks me to look over her stuff before she submits, and I work for more like $10/hour. Or $25/hr for someone who is trying to put together a grant proposal for their non-profit. Or I let a fellow artist pay me in trade. Or I tutor a kid on their admissions essay for free because I know their mom lives from paycheck to paycheck. (And even though for me it isn't about who can regale me with the best sob story––I actually KNOW these people––I get to be the one who decides essentially how much I'm going to DONATE to their cause or situation.) Or I'm completely a dry-mouthed pushover and I work for half price because I want someone who is really cute to like me.

And here's the beauty of all this. If they can't pay you, you're not screwing over your colleagues. They wouldn't have been able to pay your colleagues either. It only damages the "freelance ecosystem" if you don't take money from people who COULD pay you.

But in all these transactions you MUST KNOW YOUR VALUE.

What about competitiveness? Again, know your value. (This is like the "Know thyself" of freelance work.) If you're having to bid for a contract, and you know you need to be competitive, knowing what you're worth can help you decide how low you're willing to go. (I don't really bid for contracts, but if I ever had to, I could go as low as $45, but it wouldn't be worth it to me to spend my valuable time that I could be writing my own stuff working for any less. So I'm not going to lowball at $40 just to get the gig.)

Are there service-oriented writing jobs you haven't worked yet? I'm sure there are many, but I don't know everything you've already done. If you've done grants, applications, petitions, editing, and advocacy, you've done a lot. Grants are always going to be the biggie (because they translate most directly into money), and honestly you can make money in development if you want to do the same thing during the day. Staff writing. Blogging/web content for a non-profit's website. Philanthropic journalism. Copywriting. You might even enjoy technical writing, which doesn't OFTEN happen outside of day job contexts, but is notoriously hard to find for cheaper than a pretty "robust" market rate.

Many of these would not be most writer's first choices in what kind of writing they'd like to be doing. They usually pay the bills. But if you're picking your causes, it sounds like it might be very rewarding and the kind of writing you like to do. Personally, I would either pick one and specialize so you can be VERY good and maybe even renowned in that one thing (and probably have a skill set that might translate to paid work if you ever needed it to) or keep just helping all over the place as eclectically as you can and enjoy the sort of gestalt way that you become better at the entire spectrum of freelance and/or consulting.

I will give you one piece of advice that actually came from my editor who also does pro bono work for causes she believes in (of which, thank all the things, I am one). No matter what amount you're working for, even if it's FREE, absolutely bring 110% to the table. Do your very best. Because once your work is out in the world, no matter what you got paid for it, it is representing you. And you want your best possible effort in a portfolio if you're trying to land a paying gig.

Note: the rest of the socialist revolution will have to wait until part two, (which I will never get around to writing).