Welcome

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

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Cephalopods Attack! An Impromptu Hiatus.

We really suck at this genocide thing.
Really.
Why is Writing About Writing taking a week off?

Genocidal cephalopods, attempting to flank the army of pLink clones, have moved into the W.A.W. compound.  They didn't do a very good job as a major force of pLink clones are guarding the dimensional weak spot.  Mostly the fighting just moved into the W.A.W. compound within our dimension as a small force of them ran amok.  Mostly what THAT means is that it's a huge mess.  Bigger than even the janitor, Michael Dukakis, can handle.  We're all going to have to roll up our sleeves and dig out chunks of tentacles and goopy alien blood and stuff.

On the plus side, we beat them back.  This may have had entirely to do with the fact that in their zeal to kill pretentiousness, they tried to go down into the basement to kill my evil clone and stop his effort to "win" NaNoWriMo.  Evil Chris has set up a labyrinth of hidden doors and secret passages down there and was able to keep leading them straight into pLink ambushes.  Evil Chris recently stole Research and Development's "Door Revealer Gun" after pretending to be me and getting them to instal a reverse switch on it, so he can make almost any door down there look like it's just a regular wall.  He pretty much ran them in circles and let the pLinks pick them off a few at a time.

He's kind of clever really.  I mean that in an entirely me-deprecating way.

W.A.W. is going to need a little bit of time to recover from this travesty.  Halls are filled with corpses, office furniture is smashed to kindling.  My computer got some goop on the monitor that I might have to wipe off with a towel or something.  Of course this has NOTHING to do with the approaching holiday and the fact that I haven't had a real vacation, or usually even a two-day weekend in the nine months since W.A.W. started.  It's all about cephalopods.  Really.

We'll be taking a one week vacation from today.  Everything will come back online the Friday after Thanksgiving.  Our two guest bloggers (Guy Goodman and Leela Bruce) will be given the option to put their segments up after the break or just take the month off.  

However, in the cold and dark silence of next week, if you stop and consider how much you miss W.A.W. and how much joy and entertainment it brings to your life, please consider one of the few ways in which you can help W.A.W. continue to maintain an active and robust posting schedule.  (W.A.W. will continue no matter what its financial viability, but the ability for W.A.W. to scrape out a reasonable level of compensation [currently 10 cents a day] for its writer may affect the posting schedule in the long run.)  You will never have to pay a dime for any content on Writing About Writing, but every six weeks I will mention how you can help...should you be so inclined.

Don't forget that 10% of our budget will always go to a local children's literacy charity, and another 10% will always go towards improving the blog itself.  Our Financial Pledge is at the bottom of this page.  (Or up at the top of *this* one.)

1- Buttons.  Lots of Buttons!  Say that in your best Neo voice for maximum effect.   +1's, "Likes" or "shares" (especially on Stumbleupon) help me tremendously.  I don't know the exact formula, but I make about a penny every fifty pageviews or so.  You might think the effect of a single "+1," "Like," "Upvote," or "Share" is negligible, but I can assure you that with numbers as modest as ours, every button pressed makes a BIG difference at this point.  W.A.W. is picking up momentum slowly, but it has done so almost exclusively through social media and your help--both sharing beyond my own friends circles and improving my place in Google search results.  A single button push will help more than you might think.  And if you're feeling especially helpful you can dig up an old favorite and push some buttons there.  

2- Turn Off Your Ad Block.  Most people with Chrome or Firefox have an Adblock on.  You can turn it off just for Writing About Writing.  The ads will mostly be relevant to W.A.W.'s interests--scifi/fantasy novels, writing programs (online, seminars, and MFA's), grammar checking programs, etc....   I want to make it clear that I am not asking for anyone to actually click these ads until/unless you find something that you are genuinely interested in.  Blind clicking the ads can get me into trouble.  However if you turn off your Adblock you may see something you're interested in.  And if you don't, you can cheerfully ignore them.  I promise Blogger won't be doing any pop-ups or aggressive ads. (It's against their policy to have such an ad.)

3- Donate  If you'd rather make a more direct contribution to Writing About Writing and our future ability to bring regular updates, W.A.W. is always accepting donations.  As you can see from our modest numbers (like ten cents a day), even a small donation is a huge deal.  A couple of dollars would be three week's pay around here.  Just stuff a dollar or two into the conspicuously placed tip jar up at the top left.  

2 comments:

  1. 10% of nothing is...hang on lemmie do the math....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's true that it won't be much, but it'll be 10% of what I'm making. I should be about to get my first check from Google for $100 soon (it's what I've made since the blog started in February). I will take a picture of the receipt for $10 and post it right here.

      Delete