Cancer Update (Meta/Personal)

I had originally intended this for Thursday's post, but recovery is a non-linear process and some days sap my energy more than others. I'm definitely getting better, but (especially last week) I would do one thing and be kind of wiped out.

So in lieu of writing ABOUT WRITING, today I'm just going to tell you about my cancer journey up to this point. But I do have an insight towards the end for those who are hoping to make writing pay the bills and who want nothing more than to "make it" by some value of that that might include losing the day job. Maybe not a didactic insight. Certainly not for everybody. Might make a few of you flip some tables. Still…something I noticed nonetheless.

If you're just tuning in, a routine blood test found anemia, and the further they went, looking for the cause, the more obvious it became that something was very wrong. A colonoscopy turned up a mass and pathology said, "cancer." Colon cancer.

The next step was surgery. 

Okay the NEXT step was to set up a group on Facebook for butt-themed memes called Chris's Butt Stuff, but, you know….THEN surgery. 

It's difficult to describe just how unpleasant the ramp up to something like this is. Imagine having to rewatch Lost for the third time but you only have a bootleg recording where the audio cuts in and out, and the picture is grainy—except somehow the smoke monster makes even less sense and the time travel plot is even MORE convoluted. Every week was two or three major appointments, and tests just kept getting added. I got poked and prodded and had to fast beforehand, and drink this awful stuff that is a powerful laxative. It was invasive and violating and even though I knew I needed it, it was one of the worst stresses I'd ever been through. 

December 16th, they cut out a softball-sized mass along with a little over a third of my colon*. There were no complications that would have caused the surgery to be abdominal (rather than laparoscopic). Other than being bigger than anyone expected—it was hidden in a corner and even fooled a CT scan—it was a textbook procedure. The tumor had perforated the colon wall but there was no lymph node involvement. I don't know much about classifying the stage of cancer, but this is technically 2B according to the oncologist.

(*Now I have a semi-colon. ~rimshot~)

[Ed. Note: "No, Chris. You have a 2/3 colon.]

I mean…..I GUESS!

Right now I'm waiting for a genetic test to find out if I have something called Lynch syndrome. I have two markers for it (and the tumor kind of behaved like I have it as well—a local super-asshole tumor but without much spread), but a genetic test is required to confirm. If I've got it, there is no benefit to be gained from chemotherapy, and recent studies show it would actually make for poorer outcomes. If I don't have Lynch syndrome, a type of chemotherapy called 5FU is up next. 5FU is kind of well tolerated as far as chemo goes (I might not lose my hair), but it's still pretty rough. Going on the easiest chemo is kind of like facing off against the LOWEST ranked heavyweight boxer in the tristate area. You're still going to get your ass kicked.

Beyond that there's the original anemia and low platelets. My CT found some scarring on my liver, which is weird since I can count the number of drinks I've had ever without taking off both socks, and I've never had hepatitis. And we have to figure out if surgery solved all the original problems of anemia. It's possible that even if that was the underlying cause of everything, I might need another iron infusion to bring my numbers up to where they belong.

So there's a lot more to come. 

But the main thing is the genetic test. That's going to determine what's next. 

Moving on to the not-for-everyone-so-don't-flip-your-perfectly-good-table point.

ONE interesting thing that I kept hearing from people as it became clear that I was going to have to take some kind of break from blogging is that there were more important things than writing. 

Yes.

YES!

Yes.

But….also….

Obviously, there are more important things than writing (I swear), but for me, writing is way way way up there. I wrote the day of my surgery. I wrote the day after. I've written every single day of my recovery. (It hasn't been blogging under deadline, and it would be maybe an hour instead of five or six, but I wrote every day.) I can't imagine a life without writing. Sometimes things that are urgent crop up and I have to give priority to them over writing, but urgency and importance are different. A pot boiling over is urgent, but cooking your world-famous bolognese might not be more important than the argument you're having with your partner about your future together. You get the pot off the burner because you don't want the house to burn down (URGENT), but then, hopefully, you make a choice to let the meal go and focus on the more IMPORTANT conversation. 

And if you turn back to your bolognese and tell your partner to just calm down for a damn minute while you finish cooking the entire meal, you're making a decision.

And I'm struck again by how often I run into people who burn to "BE" writers, but do not make writing a priority in their lives. You don't necessarily have to give up a well-paying career or a social life or having kids or all your personal time, but you probably have to give up SOMETHING if your goal goes beyond being a contented hobbyist. You maybe don't have to reach for the computer the day after major surgery like some (AHEM), but if you take a couple of months off, waiting until you are absolutely fully recovered before you sit down to type a word, there's some information there about how much writing means to you and how much you want it in your life.

There are more important things than writing. Overall health is more important, and if the doctor walked in and said, "Chris, I'm sorry. If you write, the creative power of magical rainbows will melt your sutures, you will go septic,…and DIE," I certainly would have taken a break. And there are definitely things (like doctors appointments) that will be more urgent on a day-to-day timeline. 

However, it is also true that we create lives that reflect our priorities one decision at a time. And if there are too many more things in a life that are constantly more important than writing, our lives will not fail to reflect that. There will always be something. It'll be an endless cavalcade of "I have to do this one more thing, and then I'll get back to writing." This isn't a value judgement (you should probably prioritize a family if you don't want to be a shitty partner/parent, and surviving capitalism is pretty important), but it is simply a fact. I am no different than anyone else—if I prioritized writing my novel over other parts of my life, it would be done by now. I am constantly waiting for one more thing to get better, and I have placed priority on other things. I wanted a social life. I wanted a love life. My novel remains unfinished. My life reflects my priorities. 

When an urgent issue clears, a high priority will float back to the top almost immediately. A lower priority will remain low—perhaps only to be given attention when EVERYTHING else somehow requires no attention at all. And how often does that really happen?

If it doesn't float to the top, there were other priorities there. 

So I can't tell you where you land, and there's no right answer when it comes to your own relationship with creativity and expression, but FOR ME, it is perhaps more accurate to say that there are more URGENT things than writing, right NOW. But the importance of writing never faded, and as soon as the urgency wanes, the importance of writing will reassert itself in my priorities. 

A lot of people ask me how they can make it. (Actually, that's the most common question working writers get—how their success can be emulated.) And a lot of people asking the question are looking for something more complicated (yet easier to do) than, "Write every day." But perhaps "Write every day" is just the praxis for a broader idea that is better expressed by, "Make writing one of your very highest priorities or your life will reflect that it isn't."

Writing About Writing Returns (We're BACK!!)

Please Stand By
System Rebooting… …

Sleep Display Gauge- Bright Green

Pain Display Gauge- Amber Green

Mental Acuity Display Gauge- Bright Green

Energy Display Gauge- Amber With Slight Orange Tint

Artistic Expression Gauge- Red (DANGEROUSLY LOW—Recommend Writing Immediately)

Hello!

It seems I'm now a cancer survivor. 

Well, there's a little more to it, and I'll include an update with some medical details on Thursday—and, believe me, a couple of them are pretty gnarly. 

I just wanted to make sure folks know that I'm through surgery, through the make-you-loopy pain meds, through the can-barely-feed-myself phase, through the holiday season, and ready to bring Writing About Writing (and Not Writing About Writing) back online. Thank you all so much for your patience these last three weeks. It was literally the worst thing I have ever gone through, and I'm so excited to get back to writing.

Unfortunately, this isn't a switch to flip, and suddenly I'm 100% back to normal. It's a non-linear process, and I have been wrong so far about almost every prediction (both what I could do and couldn't do). Neither is my treatment exactly "over" in the strictest sense. (More deets on Thursday.) So an update schedule might be too ambitious for a while and things might be a little hit-and-miss as I transition back in. 

• I'm not going to do that thing (that I've done so often in the past) where I don't "count" writing as work because it can be done from a relaxed position. 
• I'll be working up to full speed instead of jumping into the deep end, so expect a slow ramp up. It might be a couple of months before I'm running at full steam (longer if I need chemo, but more on that Thursday).
• This slow ramp up will affect my ability to post on my Facebook Page as well. I'm back (and thank you so much to a wonderful assistant who kept some content going while I couldn't so y'all didn't forget about me), but it's going to be a while before I'm churning out the memes quite as fast and furious as before.
• I'm probably going to be running several guest blogs in the next few weeks to try and keep some content going but take the pressure off of me. It'll be a bit more than my usual "maybe-once-every-couple-of-months" pace.
• It might be a while before I can hit my pre-surgery posting speed (and even longer before I get back to where I was before all the health stuff started that I eventually learned was cancer). I still have lots of follow-up appointments, ongoing therapies, and some further diagnostics, and every one of those is a half a day's productivity lost.
• I usually do some end of one year/start of another updates before I jump back into my regular blog stuff, but that takes a couple of weeks even when I'm posting four or five times a week. So this year I'm going to trickle them in or I would still be at it by mid-March.
• I'm going to lean a bit more on posts that I always worry are "fluff." Most readers seem to like them, but I always feel a little guilty if they go up at any time other than when I've been slamming out high quality content for days (so like…not since the pandemic started), but now I'm going to need some lower impact days on the regular.
• I will need to make more appeals posts than I usually do. I really try not to be a content creator that passes the hat every post, but my medical bills are REALLY adding up. (I'm already in the mid-four figures at this point, and that's A) not counting the surgery itself or the hospital stay and B) JUST the medical bills, and not the incidental stuff around the surgery like lost work or hotel rooms for grandparents who came into town to do childcare.) And folks are still asking me how they can help. [I promise the answer is going to be a couple of bucks if you have it or becoming a Patron if you can.] I'll go back to my old appeals post rate of once every month or two soon enough. It has never been my intention to spam people or guilt them beyond what they are able to give freely and joyfully in support of my work. However, in while I'm looking at bills that are twice my monthly income with a twitch in my eye, and while I'm facing down algorithms on social media that can, for months, keep even an active reader from even KNOWING that I crowdfund, it might be closer to every couple of weeks.

What I'm saying is that things might be erratic and a little different than our update schedule for a while. And they might take a little while to get back to the pace we're all used to. 

But I am back. I survived. And I have so much more to say….er….write.

We Will Be Right Back After These Messages

My patrons got a version of this a week ago. They tend to get news like this sooner since it's their support that keeps the rent paid. But I still wanted to make sure that everyone reading, and maybe wondering what was going on, knows what's happening, why there have been very few posts, and what the timeline for a return to normalcy might look like. Writing About Writing isn't going away, shutting down, or going to be on break any longer than is necessary for my recovery from surgery.

If you’ve been following updates, you know that I have colon cancer. And if you’ve been following closer, you know that I have surgery scheduled for December 16th (just four days from this writing). I've become the mental and emotional equivalent of the screaming possum meme.

I think I'm about 97% unspooled at this point. I might have three percent but it actually comes and goes. Last week, I was at least keeping up a sporadic sense of togetherness (even though I wasn't having good DAYS anymore, and had begun to focus on good HOURS), but now I’m completely in crisis mode, everything is focused on just putting one foot in front of the other, and if I get twenty or thirty minutes between . I’m a mess, and I am having an impossible time writing much more than raw, unfiltered emotional splats. I think about blogging, and I stare at the blinking cursor as the hours go by.

The last thing I want to be is a crowdfunded content creator who pauses the content. That’s a very uncomfortable place for me to be as someone with exorbitant medical bills coming up. (I’ve never wanted a regular, salaried job, but AT THIS MOMENT, I sure wouldn’t mind being able to take a medical leave of absence.) But I can’t keep going right now—I have to focus on my health. I’m going to have to put the blog on a (brief) hiatus to get through the surgery and initial recovery. I’ll just have to worry when I get back about what needs to be rebuilt. 

It won’t be long before I won't have much else to do BESIDES sit in bed and write blog posts, but for now I have to focus on getting there. My surgery is the 16th. I’m in the hospital for, they hope, two nights. After that I’m home, but probably mostly out of it on pain meds for at least a week or two. Then you'll probably see some status updates, quick posts, a wrap up of our current YA horror book recommendation, and a guest post or two from my most recent call.

My hope is that after Christmas, you’ll start seeing some updates trickle in. But officially, I’m going to say that we’re on hiatus until January—maybe the second week or so if there are no complications in surgery and my recovery goes well. 

-Chris

Three Announcements (Book Recs (and Secs)/Guest Blog/Cancer Meta)

There are three major announcements today. 

First of all, please don't forget to throw in a nomination (or a second) in our Best Y.A. Book (or Series) book recommendation conversation. I haven't been able to do as many reposts on social media, so we're a little thin on nominations. I don't think I'm going to be able to run another one of these until I'm fully back from at least surgery, and possibly whatever further therapy cancer demands of me, so this might be it for at least a couple of weeks, but maybe longer.

Second, I'm about to go through this monster list of folks who want to get in on some guest blogging, and I want to remind a few of you who sent me proposals—some of which sounded incredibly interesting—that there was a way I knew if you had read those submission guidelines VERY CAREFULLY…….and a few of you didn't. If you'd like to re-submit properly, I'll take those submissions, but I'm looking at about 100+, so naturally the first ones I'm going to reject are the folks who didn't manage to follow the first set of instructions. Take it as a lesson in the harsh world of publishing—always follow the submission guidelines. No matter how good your writing is, you're still fundamentally seeking to establish a working, professional relationship with your collaborators, so they are going to want to know you can/will follow their directions.

Lastly, let me just make you aware of how things are likely to look heading into my surgery. I'm still going to keep writing, but the amount of doctor's appointments and news is impacting my writing schedule. A lot. This week alone I did a CT scan, got news that I have a dominant trait genetic disorder, and did a procedure with a multi-day recovery time. Even the good news kind of flattens me. I've been holding my breath for so long that when someone tells me I don't have any metastatic cancer, it's hours of emotional relief. I'm going to run the results of our book rec conversation (above) tomorrow, and call it a week—a very difficult week. 

Next week is the pre-op, an anesthesiologist consult, and a blood draw for hematology, and that is if absolutely nothing gets added last minute and I hear absolutely no news at all. I will probably be able to do a regular writing post or two if I only have the three appointments. Many of my posts might not be "about writing" so much as kind of cancer updates and status reports until I'm kind of back from surgery. I imagine they're going to send me home with some of the good drugs and when I've healed a bit, I'm going to have a lot of time in bed to do some writing. That's when to expect me to get back into the swing of the blog. But I want you to know I'm thinking of all of you and let those of you thinking about me know where I am.

Tuesday Report (It's About to Get Funky)

Due to a temporal anomaly in the Writing About Writing compound, this post has been brought to you from yesterday. It is possible that tomorrow's post will be brought to you from next week, and until we can clear this up, it might be best to expect the unexpected.

Reminder: I just found out that I have cancer.  And Tuesday reports are kind of going to be Cancer Update™ for a while. Treatment is about to start, so my life is about to get…funky. 

Quick Personal Update-

I got back from vacation and jumped straight back into medical crap. Actually, it might be more accurate to say that medical crap jumped ME. My GI specialist (the one that colonoscopied me) called me late on Sunday night to talk about something called Lynch syndrome, which it's likely that I have. It's a genetic condition that raises the likelihood of certain kinds of cancers—including the one I have. I don't have kids, so some of the urgency was deferred, but I'll have to do genetic counseling once I'm done with surgery.

Yesterday I had a CT scan with contrast.

Tomorrow I have a procedure that will knock me out for a couple of days.

Today was just therapy, which I restarted when I got my diagnosis, just so I can have some help dealing with everything that's coming up for me.

Surgery is scheduled for Dec 16 (so I'm probably going to be out of it until at least Monday).

I'm writing a little every day, but I'm hanging on to blogging by a thread right now. One of the things I'm dealing with is just how overwhelming this has been. It's not like I come home after an appointment or the minute I get off the phone from some bad news and just hop right back into writing. Sometimes even the good news takes a few hours of being emotional to process. Today I found out I had no lung and liver involvement (which means it's not stage four, and I don't need to START with chemo) and even though that was great news, I was out of it for most of the rest of the day—just so relieved from the breath I had been holding for weeks.

Weekly Schedule Adjustments-

Tomorrow isn't going to happen because of my procedure, but after that I won't have a lot to do BUT sit around, so the plan is to get some writing done during recovery. (Incidentally, next week has "only" three appointments, but they're all on Wednesday, so I might be able to get in one more half week before the surgery.)

I'm trying hard not to just shut everything down until post surgery. I should at least have a few good days until then and next week doesn't look two bad.

Tomorrow and Thursday are probably going to involve wrapping up our latest book recommendation conversation. I badly need an admin day to go through about a billion emails. I'm hoping I can write something significant for Friday while I convalesce, but it might be touch and go.

Novel Progress-

Old Crusty 1.0 Draft: 34, 398

I'm still not getting much fiction written. What little writing time I have is going towards the blog right now.

Behind the Scenes-

I need an admin day in the worst way. I have a stack of emails to reply to that is taller than me. I would normally take a day off, but I think that just running the book recommendation, I can at least get a quick post up and then tab over to my Gmail and roll up my sleeves.

Tuesday Report

It's going to be a light fare here at Writing About Writing this week. Before my diagnosis, I'd planned and paid for a small out-of-town vacation over Thanksgiving, and my original plan was to have some articles ready to go, do some writing while I was there, and still post a full week.

Despite the gravity of the news, my partner and I decided to go forth with the vacation just to get our mind off of things for a few days. I made sure I had a week off from CT scans and consults and procedures. If I'm going to spend the next two or three months (or more) trying not to die, I'm going to spend this one week trying to live. 

However, I've also decided NOT to try to post a full week of articles, and just take the week (MOSTLY) off. With everything going on, including stress, a totally scattered brain periodically contemplating things like what a burden I'm going to be to my loved ones, and doctors' appointments, I didn't have any pre-written articles, and I don't want to spend the better part of a couple of days in the Air B&B trying to hit deadlines. So the only thing I'm really going to post is just last call and wrap up of our current book recommendation conversation. Otherwise I'm going to enjoy my time. It's going to be a LOT when I get back, and it's going to happen FAST. 

So one last hurrah….

Guest Bloggers Wanted

So for obvious reasons, I'm going to need some help with the heavy lifting in the month or two to come (and possibly longer, depending on my post-surgery prognosis). I don't want to put Writing About Writing on hiatus or take a health leave of absence as a crowd funded content creator. Thus, I'm going to try to curate some guest articles and mix those in with my own. Now is your chance to dip a toe in the water of blogging to see what it's like, help me out even though you don't have a spare dime in your budget, maybe even make a couple of dollars, promote yourself, or just get your voice out there.

I have a warning though. This time, I cannot be your kind and clement gatekeeper who holds your hand and reminds you gently that you I need you to go back and do X, Y, or Z if you want your submission to be a blog post for Writing About Writing. I have done this before, and I simply do not have the time and energy to do it this time. I'm doing this because I'm overwhelmed already. 

I've taken a lot of time and energy to make sure the submission guidelines are very clear. Please meet me halfway and take the time to understand them if you want to write for us.

Got something to say about writing, art, inspiration, creativity, motivation, process, craft, literature, reading...or possibly cheese?

Got something that writers or book lovers REALLY need to see?

Want to respond to something I've written, even if it's to completely disagree with me and tell me I smell like soup? (And the good soup that reminds you of snug childhood winters, but something with weird goat cheese and seasonings that smells a little off.)

Want to take advantage of my (currently) 40,00-60,000+ page views per month and advertise your own online endeavors in a thinly veiled self-promote-a-thon wrapped in the "sheep's clothing" of an article? (For which I will only demand a shoutout in return.)

Want to put an article or three out in the world, be read by lots of readers, but without having to start your own blog and do all that self promotion? Or just want to try blogging on for size a few times before you start one of your own?

Want to even make a couple of bucks? (Oh yes. I said it. No just "exposure" here!)

Then I want you!

Hey, I gotta get a book written. I need a day a week where someone else can do some of the heavy lifting.

Bring it!  

Read this whole page––I'll know if you didn't

Then drop me an e-mail. (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) As long as what you want to write is mostly coherent, at least obliquely about writing, no more than 82% horribly offensive to cishet white males, non-abusive to demographics typically pushed to the margins of our society, doesn't make me cry (except in the good way), contains at least one vulgarity, innuendo, or salvo of F-Bombs to maintain the steadfast and unswerving lack of decorum I maintain around here, I will consider your article.

Now paying people and having the traffic I do, does mean that I usually get about two hundred or so replies to a post like this, and I get to be a little picky, so please put on your Sunday best and read this entire post very, VERY carefully.

I'm obviously not going to host anything that is utterly shitty to me or some kind of elitist skidmark about who deserves the label of "writer" and who is a "total poseur." Miss me with that shit. More importantly, miss my readers.

I also can't promise that if you write an article on why I'm totes wrong in my Wrongface about something like writing every day or reading a lot that I won't write some kind of rebuttal, but all opinions on writing are welcome--even ones antithetical to mine. (I do reserve the right to refuse a post for any reason, but I promise that reason won't be because I disagree with you about daily writing or you think NaNo is unambiguously awesome or whatever.)

And...if you're one of my regular guest bloggers, I'll even give you your own link on The Reliquary (unless you'd rather I didn't) and let you post links to your own fiction. The magic number is FIVE regular articles to open up those privileges. (And then we'll talk ratios.)

Here are some guidelines so we don't waste each other's time. If you don't at least get through them, this isn't going to go well (and like I said above, I have a way of knowing):

• If you send me offers to do web content, I mark your mail as spam. 
• Personalize your email. If you're flinging out a lot of these, that's fine, but if you've got a form letter with a link, be aware that it looks EXACTLY like the spam I get four or five times a day. I don't always know when I'm looking at a legitimate offer for a guest blog.
• If you are a robot I will mark you as spam. Unless you can do dishes. Robots that do dishes are welcome.
• If you can't figure out what this blog is about, and offer to do articles about steam roofing or tantric sex techniques or something, I'll mark your mail as spam (although I might have some follow up questions about the tantric sex techniques). I'm not just web content here; this blog has a theme and everything.
• Please read the paragraph below the bullet points very, very, very carefully.
• Your writing is yours. I'm going to ask that you let the post run on my page for a while before you cross post it, but ultimately I respect that as the generator of the creative effort, your writing is yours. If you ask me to remove it, I will. If you repost it somewhere else, that's okay. IT IS YOURS! IT WILL STAY YOURS!
• There are no author passwords to Writing About Writing–you'll submit your articles to me. I will post them if they are good enough to post.
• The more formatting your post needs (italics, bold, underlining, bullet points, pull quotes, double tab paragraphs) the more likely it is I'm just going to copy and paste it and it will come out looking STRANGE on blogger. I honestly don't know why this happens, but the font ends up being small no matter how many times I try to fix it. It's much better if you need only a few formatting changes and I can start with fresh text and do the formatting myself. 
• If you skipped all that dull text up above, this blog is about writing, art, inspiration, creativity, motivation, process, craft, literature, reading, and maybe cheese. Don't skip the paragraph below though.
• Right now I'm not publishing fiction other than my own. I would be willing to publish fiction of any of our regular guest bloggers but getting that distinction takes some doing. (Five regular articles.) If you have something more creative (like someone mentioned poems about writing) run it past me. I might be up for something like that. Maybe.
• I'm not a hardass gatekeeper—especially not about grammar—but you do have to be able to write a little and there will be competition. I am going to get a lot of responses to this post. I'd love to publish them all, but I will (at most) be picking one a week. An incoherent rant about the tyranny of grammar or something you slapped together in ten minutes probably won't be make it. Write your best shit (you should never submit less anyway), meticulously follow all the submission guidelines (you should always do this), and let loose. But don't get too nervous about whether it means you're a good writer or not. It just means there's competition and maybe some other topic fit better or you'll nail it in a year with practice. 
• You don't have to agree with me, particularly about writing stuff, but I'm not going to post wildly divergent social positions, humor that punches down, or deeply problematic phrasing. Anything I post here isn't an "I agree with this 100%!" endorsement, but if I hit publish on it, I'm going to be the one to answer for it when I get pissed off readers in my comments. If you want to write about how the PC police are agents of "the libs," and they won't let you even use the word "XXXX" anymore, go start your own fucking blog, so I can never read it.
• I won't make any content changes to your writing, but I may make some copy edits. If a proofreading change might change your meaning, I will run it by you.
• Please fucking read the paragraph below.
• When I say "I will make some edits" I want you to understand that I'm not a copy editor and wouldn't be good at it even if I wanted to be. I'm not here to fix up a post from scratch that you didn't have time to proofread. Clean it up. 
• You may link out as much as you want (even self-promotional links) within reason, but I'm going to check them all--if they go to spammy shit, I won't publish your article. I don't have a rubric for "within reason."  If your post is more links than articles, no. If it has two dozen solid citations for the point you're making, we're still totally golden. If you have linked to six separate self-published books on your Amazon page about sex with dinosaurs..........well, it better be one great fucking article. 
• Please, for the love of all that is holy, and in the name of Poseidon's left nipple, read the goddamned fucking paragraph below.
• If your post is a giant ass commercial for some product, then you need to be paying me for advertising space. (I offer very reasonable rates.) And if your product isn't awesome and something I totally believe in, that's not going to happen anyway since WAW is generally ad free. Thinly veiled self promotion under the auspices of something that at least resembles an article is totally okay though–just know that it might not get a lot of hits. I only get about 200 views on articles that aren't liked or reshared through some social media. If my readers don't like something, it does NOT do very well. If they do, well they know where the like and share buttons are and it quickly goes viral.
• Be aware of, and at least passingly comfortable with my politics and social justice posts. I absolutely do not require guest bloggers to agree with me–certainly not about every issue. However, there is nothing more desperately unprofessional than writers so happy to be published anywhere that they turn around and are shocked to see their own platform throw out a social position they can't abide by. Also, include the word sparklefuzz in your email's subject line if you want any sort of reply from me at all. This shows me how you've actually taken the time to read the guidelines, and gives me an easy way to search for them when I get buried in emails which is all the time.
• Seriously, read the paragraph below.

The very important paragraph:

W.A.W. isn't making very much money article per article. I can't offer more than a couple of dollars (currently $10 for an article that does on average as well as the ones I write and more if it does better). Most guest bloggers ask to fold their payment back into W.A.W. as a donation, but that's never expected, and I'm happy to pay you for your writing. If your article brings in heavy traffic, we will figure something extra out so I'm not taking the hard work of a writer with nothing but the promise of "exposure." Plus of course if someone sends me a donation earmarked for a guest blogger, I will pass the money onto them and even cover the Paypal fee–that's for them, not me. It may not add up to much (unless you get millions of hits or write for me a lot) but if it came from your work, I'll make sure I'm not taking advantage of you.

Less important paragraphs, but you probably should keep paying attention if you don't want to be frustrated:

THIS PROCESS WILL TAKE TIME BECAUSE I AM A WRITER (with a second job who just got diagnosed with cancer), NOT A MANAGING EDITOR. When you email me in the appropriate way, I star the email as "important," and it may take me a week to ten days (or more) to get to it. I then send back a "form" reply to everyone who didn't spam me or pitch steam roofing articles with the next step (which involves either a sample or the article you'd like considered if it's already written). I usually never get a response to the second email. This process can take a month or more so if you're in a terrible hurry, you may need to throw down a rope and swear on the soul of your father, Domingo Montoya, that I will clear out my email cache alive. Honestly, most people just ghost me after not getting a reply immediately. If you aren't ready to be patient…..well really you shouldn't be doing submissions anyway––just go self-publish.

Of those who send me something they want published, about 10% actually make it to the blog. Now, just so you know, while I do get submissions that aren't ready for publication yet, it's actually far less common than just submissions where folks don't follow the directions. I'm not even talking about anal retentive directions that you get from most publishers like single spaced or page numbers. I mean they don't reply to the first email. Or they link me something and never tell me if that's their sample or if that's what they want me to publish. Or I ask about a biography and a pic and never hear back. Or they send me six emails in a row wondering if they can write ten to fifteen articles a day because they gotta make rent.

I know it seems like hoops and an assembly line and believe me on this end it's ten times worse, but trust me that once we're done with the hoopla, the rapport will be very informal and friendly and unless your posts get really off topic or weird, I'll give them a lot more latitude than the first one–it will be a much less stressful process once you're "in."

Also.....most of the writers who do get all the way to the publication point send me between two and four articles and then lose enthusiasm. Maybe it's just not the insta-fame they were hoping for or it turns out it's harder work than they thought to keep cranking out posts every week. So if you're serious about this, the best thing you can do is read everything carefully (like this post and the e-mails I send you), and stick with it.

Just like writing itself.