Full Steam Into a Broken Future (Help Needed!)

[This article is an appeals post. It has some great insight into the actual numbers and monetization of being a working writer and how a modern working writer can make money before they have a big five contract, but I'm not going to try to "trick" you that this post isn't mostly about hoping you can spare a few bucks a month. I'll limit such posts to twice a month (once in the blog and once directly to social media) to keep down on the spam factor.

As always, if you want to help in a way that doesn't cost a dime, one of the simplest ways is to "like" (or +1 or upvote or whatever), comment, or share this post on social media so that the algorithms that drive them are more likely to show it to more people.]

We've been able to get some really good posts up lately, and keep our schedule going, even between all the train trips and vacations in the last month or so, and there are a lot more really great posts coming. Perhaps even better, I've been able to finally knock some solid word counts out on Triexta. This all happens if you give a mouse a cookie a Chris some free time. The great articles. The great ones to come. The fiction I've been able to work on. The better guest blog posts I've been able to find. All of that happened because of my patrons.


Let me say that again All of that happened because of my patrons.

You can be a patron too--through Patreon

I can't do any of this without you. The amount of work I'd need to do to maintain Writing About Writing as an unpaid gig would mean I could only update about 2-3 times a week, and with a "solid" article maybe two or three times a month. Even now, my usual week is about 65 hours. 35 or so of writing and another 30 of side gigs that help me pay the bills.

But you see what I can do when I am given the time to do it.

Let me show you what the end of the month (and beginning of the next month) usually looks like to me.

Must....not....develop....complex.
Image description:
$2 Deleted, $5 Deleted, $10 deleted, $1 deleted, $1 pledged....

It's tough enough being a freelancer, but watching that end of the month can be extra nail bitey.  (That's when Patreon sends out a message thanking everyone, and a bunch of people remember that they need to cancel.)  Then of course AFTER the payments go through, there's another wave of folks who are reminded that they need to cancel. My income goes down, then crawls back up over the month then drops down again right before I get paid. And if I'm lucky....it'll end up a net gain.

Not every job you can say you will never be sure if you'll take a 10% pay cut or get a $70 raise. Spin the wheel--let's see what THIS month holds!

Currently for September things aren't looking too terrible, but we haven't entered the "purge" period yet.

Image description "September 2018 summary: -3 in pledges, +2 patrons

MOST of this activity is out of my hands. I sometimes see things grow slower or take a slight dip when I'm not able to post as much, but it seems to have a lot more to do with people's lives than my update schedule. (Every time I ask about it, my patrons usually tell me that if anything, I could tone it down a little, and they'd be okay. I'm harder on myself about that than everyone else combined.)

This is why even small patrons are so very valuable. A thriving "ecosystem" of small donors can absorb a lot more of the monthly ebbs (and occasional big donor crisis) without me wondering if I need to cancel my cell phone and stop "splurging" on the good bread.  When my income goes down by 3%, it worries me a lot less than when it goes down by 15%.

My current goal is to have enough money to not lose ground when the individual insurance plans go up (because I'm freelance and have to buy insurance off the individual plan market) as the CBO says they will. Also to not be rocked when my taxes go up because I can't write off things like my office* anymore.

*For values of "office" that include a third of my bedroom where the desk is.

However, there is another cost looming, and it's gonna get serious soon.

When I left my last living situation where I was househusband and had zero expenses (and every penny I made from writing was spending money), most of my shit was recently purchased. That was over two years ago now. My laptop seems to be doing okay and my car hasn't needed any major work yet, but lots of stuff like that is coming. My wardrobe is getting threadbare. My phone died and needed replacing a couple of months ago. My free maintenance package on my Prius expired. A lot of little costs of living are starting to show up that I didn't have to deal with right away and it's raising my "expenses" column. Christ I'm even just starting to run out of the like mega Costco packs of non perishable shit like toothpaste, deodorant, and razor cartridge refills. They aren't things I can just blow off as bougie consumerism. (I'll be the first to admit that when my iPad dies, it might have to stay unreplaced for a long while, but I can't be quite so cavalier about, like, buying some new jeans.) I'd love to keep writing instead of going for that side gig.

So if you like this blog and the writing I do and want to see more of it, please consider a small monthly donation through Patreon.

And of course if a monthly donation isn't in your cards, a one-time donation through Paypal would be fine. I can even give you a P.O. Box if you want to mail a check or send some kind of care package or goods in trade instead of cash (contact me at chris.brecheen@gmail.com). I once got a package from someone who sent me their visual art as "an art for art trade" and it is framed on my wall and one of my most treasured possessions.

"Why Didn't You Report It At The Time?"

[CN: SA and SA reporting fuckery]

Dear fellow dudes (and a few others):

"Why didn't you report it at the time?" is a rape culture script.

These rape culture scripts act like a well choreographed dance. I say X; rape culture counters with Y. Like how anonymous reporters are never credible and named ones "just want fame/attention"––conveniently tying up ALL reporters with automatic, predetermined levels of incredulity. Move and countermove are all part of the dance.

"Why didn't you report it sooner?" is played like a "counterspell" in a collectable card game when dismissing any accusations over a certain length of time (as if the ones made the next day are taken any more seriously). It is merely THE script that gets used to dismiss any accusations older than a few days. (Just like "this will ruin their future" gets used to dismiss accusations from last night.) It joins victim blaming about clothing choices, citing prior promiscuity, pointing to intoxication, and sudden vigilant concern about a legal burden of proof (which is, unsurprisingly, comically impossible to achieve) in saying whatever it takes to blame and ignore survivors rather than their rapists.

Rape culture ignores greasy-haired sheriff's deputies who gigglingly, mockingly wonder why you're "looking a gift horse in the mouth" when you DO try to report ("because guys always want it and can't be raped, amirite?"), so you just walk away feeling sick and try to move on with your life. It ignores partners who would pick fights about how you no longer find them attractive and wail-cry for hours if you wouldn't have sex every single time they wanted, so you started to just do it...for weeks or months or years...just to avoid that fight. You didn't know what basically anyone else would call that kind of manipulation until you were in your late thirties. It ignores the people who spend years afterwards joking about it ("Ha ha! You weren't taking no for an answer! Ha ha ha."). Because then your partner wouldn't have just ignored a hard no––wouldn't BE the kind of person to just ignore a hard no––and it wouldn't be what you keep thinking maybe it was. But secretly you wondered, as the months went by, and you felt less safe ever refusing because what if they don't listen again. Could you have or should you have said no louder, firmer, been more forceful, gotten angry, risked a fight when they didn't listen and just kept going––taking a physiological response for their answer instead of a clearly stated negative on consent.

Months and years wondering if maybe it was somehow your fault.

Rape culture ignores dismissals. It ignores social censure. It ignores the church that covers it up. It ignores the family that sweeps it under the rug. It ignores the good ol' boys who simply say "He'd never do that!" It ignores an apathetic criminal justice system. It ignores the friends who turn on the reporter. It ignores how many rapists are convicted and still serve no time. It ignores death threats against the reporter. It ignores the victim blaming. It ignores the shame.

Rape culture ignores everything about what it means to report and about what those who do go through. Every. Single. Time.

The only thing someone is revealing about themselves if they ever ever Ever **EVER** use "Why didn't they say anything at the time?" is that they consciously ignored every single story that survivors took the time and energy and revisited trauma to share. Asking that question is the opposite of of a good faith query. Almost none are genuinely perplexed. Its only function is to be a cheap, passive aggressive "counterpoint" to quickly erase the report, dismiss the reporter, and the only thing it really reveals is that they weren't listening the first hundred or thousand times. They don't know because they don't want to know.

And that says an awful lot about about them.

Train Write (Meta and Personal Update)

The sun was in my eyes and the scruff was getting unruly,
but here is a picture from day 2 of the trip home.

It’s been a fantastic couple of weeks.

The train vacation/writer’s retreat has been a huge hit. While I enjoyed myself at the destinations I hit (and was wistful to leave), I honestly could have used a little more train.

Imagine the cowbell skit...but with trains.

"I gotta be honest guys. I coulda used a little more train."

"Chris, you're gonna want that train."

"I gotta have more train, baby!"

I got so much done when was on the train that it kind of felt like the old days before kids and sixteen jobs. The before time.

I’m now scheming all the ways to make Amtrak points so that I can basically take ubercheap visits to everywhere. I probably know a couch I can crash on in most cities I'd go, and if not, I've never been one who needs more than a Motel 6 or Econo-lodge. I can use an Amtrak credit card to pay for everything instead of cash. (Of course, I can’t afford to carry debt, so I’ll have to pay the balance off every month as soon as it's due.) I’m even considering taking all those market research quizzes. (Why no. I don’t particularly care about the price point of yachts. Thanks for the extra half a mile worth of credit. I'm 1/10000 the way to Disneyworld!) I kinda sorta quit the summer school job that paid for this year's vacation, so I'll have to get creative and save up if I want to do more train trips. And I want to do more train trips!

"I got a fever! And the only prescription....is more TRAIN!"



I'm pretty stoked about the work that got done and where WAW is positioned for the next month or so because of it. I got a lot of writing done, including the next week of posts and an extra filler post that is actually kind of good that I can kind of get up some day when everything falls apart. You can look forward to some really solid posts in the near future. Plus I will finally be able to slap up some early access stuff early for my ten dollar Patrons.  If I can keep my hands off of any tempting double books (and I am doing JUUUUUUUUST well enough that I probably can), I can possibly even start in on some of the really long-forgotten sequels like blogging advice, my Skyrim post (which requires advancing in the game and have you ever tried having three jobs a toddler and playing a Bethesda game?), and the conclusion to some fiction.

Let me also tell you what I learned, because it just wouldn't be a personal update if I didn't try to shoehorn in a lesson about writing SOMEwhere. 

This isn't anything I haven’t “learned” a hundred times, but it’s worth saying again and again, especially to any writers who think that anything other than solid, sustained effort (things like a writer's retreat) is going to be the magic formula.

I got a lot of work done. Maybe twice what I normally do on a pretty good day. And I was on that train for six full days (non-contiguous), so you can imagine. I wrote emails, finished overdue letters to (now ex) employers, and knocked out a bunch of articles. I even got some work done on my manuscript. But here's the thing....that's only about thirty to forty pages of work. (I don't write that fast, but even if I did, I probably wouldn't have more than doubled my regular output.) I didn't finish my novel. I didn't do months and months worth of work. I still had to eat and go to the bathroom and stretch and get off the train at the longer stops to get SOME exercise. I still had to sleep. And I could still be distracted by the phone and FB every time we went through some farm or village with a drizzle of cellular signal. Also, to be honest, I wish I had spent more time reading because that's important to a writer too, and I sort of just focused on writing. And not to put to cliché a point on it, but if I hadn't cultivated the skills to focus, I could have been a lot more distractible.

It was lovely and I want to do more of it, but short of locking oneself away forever, any retreat like that is just going to be a few days of good output. It's not going to be all your hopes and dreams come true in one long weekend.

If you want to go on lockdown at a hotel or do a retreat or take a train, that's pretty normal for a writer––especially those writers who have a little bit of money to cover such expenses, but none of that is going to be a silver bullet, and you're not "missing out" if you can't afford to do it. The thing that will get the shit written––ALWAYS AND FOREVER––is going to be that inexorable, dogged determination of output (preferably daily or as close as you can muster) that gets pages slogged out week after week and month after month. No flash in the pan retreat will do that for you.

Nominations Needed: What's The Best Classic Young Adult Book (or series) Not Written by a Cis Het White Man

We need your nominations: what is the best young adult book or series from before 2000 written by a woman, POC, or member of the LGBTQIA+ community? 

Please follow this link if you're wondering why this poll has some particular limitations.

*rips that page out and throws it away*  



Okay, whatever you thought was going on with our poll is not going on.

Forget that.

Just erase it from your mind.

Men in Black flashy thingie yourself. Tell yourself there was a kick ass post that day and you totally loved it…about swamp gas. (Not swamp ass—though maybe a PSA to writers about swamp ass might be useful and um….ANYWAY.)

We just were NOT getting the kind of nomination love we need to run a poll. 

I don’t know if I worded it too weirdly or it was the timing or the day or what but now we’re going to do the really real post. CLASSIC YA. (Classic as defined by before 2000).

The Rules

1. Please note the diversity requirements above. 
2. This poll is for fiction written before 2000. (That means the copyright must be 1999 or before.) 
3. As always, I leave the niggling over "YA" to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. If you feel like The Joy Luck Club is young adult, I will furrow my brow, make an "Erm?" noise, and shrug. (Though you may need to show your work in order to get the seconds you'll need to make the poll.) I'll only throw them out if they get super ridiculous. 
4. You may nominate two (2) books or series. If you nominate three or more I will NOT take anything after the first two books on your list.  (I will, however, consider a long list to be "seconds" if someone else nominates the other books.)
5. You may (and absolutely should) second as many nominations of others as you wish. Also stop back in and see if anyone has put up something you want to see go onto the poll. This one is going to have fierce competition. Second titles (and possibly thirded and fourthed titles) will be the ONLY ones going on to the polls.
6. Put your nominations here. I will take nominations only as comments and only on this post. (No comments on FB posts or G+ will be considered nominations.) If you can't comment for some reason because of Blogger, send me an email (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) stating exactly that, and I will personally put your comment up. I am not likely to see a comment on social media even if it says you were unable to leave a comment here. 
7. You are nominating WRITTEN young adult fiction, not their movie portrayals. If you thought Flowers in the Attic was a great movie, but you didn't really care for the book, then that shouldn't be your nomination.
8. This is probably well known by vets of this blog by now, but there will be no more endless elimination rounds. I will take somewhere between 8-20 best performing titles and at MOST run a single semifinal round. So second the titles you want even if they already have one. (Yes, I guess that would make them thirds, fourths, etc...) The competition on THIS poll is going to be FIERCE so please come back and second, third, fourth, and twenty-fifth everything you want to see go on to the poll.

Catch You On the Flipside (Personal Update)

Hi folks,

We're about to go "dark" here at Writing About Writing for a couple of days.

Hang on. Hang on. While I know some of you just felt the icy grip of panic, let me assure you all that you'll still get all the great posts that you're used to (and maybe even a bit more of the good stuff and less fluff)––just slightly out of the order you're used to. 

See, I'm about to lose WiFi.

You see, right I'm now heading home on a train after a wonderful and rejuvenating vacation. I'm currently on a short jump from Ann Arbor to Chicago and this train has WiFi. But after that, it'll be a couple of days on the cross country train that does not. I'll have signal when I'm going through towns or the train stops at the bigger stations, so I can try to keep up with my Facebook Page, but no WiFi with which to upload posts from my laptop.

That's why I posted through the last weekend, and I will post through the next one as well. You'll get the same number of posts, my days "off" will just be this weird cluster across the next couple of days.

The catch is, I'll be writing. The whole time. That's really all I do on trains besides sleep and read, and I'll be clacking away for most of the (almost) three days. So when I come back out the other end, I should have some really good articles to post.

I enjoyed my vacation and loved the train part (I'm really looking forward to the extended writing opportunities on the way back), but I have to say that I could have used a little more train. Both my hosts were great about giving me some time to write, but it usually takes another writer to really GET that my usual diet is six to eight HOURS, and that's too long to be rude to someone who is excited to go do something with you.

Seriously. I have a fever and the only prescription is more train.

Results: Best Young Adult Book or Series not by a Cishet White Guy (2000-Present)

It's been a long time since I've seen anyone kick the crap out of any poll so thoroughly, but there was no contest on this one. Tricksters Duology was all out of bubblegum, it seems.

It's pretty easy to guess where we're going next. Fire up your nomination lobes for young adult stuff from the late 70s, 80s, and 90s and I'll get that going tomorrow. Thank you to everyone who participated in making this poll awesome.

Text results below.

Tricksters Duology - T. Pierce 112 35.78%
Hunger Games - S. Collins 47 15.02%
Graceling - K. Cashore 42 13.42%
Binti - N. Okorafor 29 9.27%
Finishing School Series - G. Carriger 26 8.31%
The Hate U Give - A. Thomas 22 7.03%
Akata Witch - N. Okorafor 18 5.75%
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - B. A. Sáenz 17 5.43%

Are Snippets While Depressed Writing?

Does light writing while depressed "count"?

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer a couple each week.  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. Our questions might look a little "thematic" in the next few weeks since they come from disassembled Twenty Questions posts.]

Jere asks:

I have a srs question.  

Let's say someone has many years-long depression that kills most of their will to ever create any kind of art, let alone clean their house or properly take care of themselves besides absolute basic daily needs.

If the best they can do for actual writing is to make pages of notes in building characters or settings, and small snippets of situational scenes for practice, and they keep doing this for years... does this still count as "write every day"?

My reply:

First of all, I'm very sorry about your depression. I struggle with some down energy that kicks my ass for a couple of days but it just doesn't compare to some folks' struggles, and I avoid the D word. I know that mental illness can affect creativity, daily routine, and even just enjoyment of once-enjoyable things, so I don't want to step in here like I have answers a professional therapist would. I have some advice for writing with depression, and there's more to come after my attendance of Worldcon 76, but take it with a grain of salt as well as whatever level of help you might be able to afford and as much gentle self-care you can get. The best we can do is the best we can do.

"Write every day" shouldn't be prescriptive in the sense that anyone is able to be an arbiter of any particular writing adjacent activity's validity as really real writing, and if it is, you have my permission to snap kick the prescriber in their shin*. In that regard, I am unable to bestow the status of what "counts" and "doesn't count." (And neither will the deluge of comments in various social media [most from those who didn't read the article] telling you that absolutely it counts.)

No one––absolutely no one––has the power to take that judgement call away from YOU, whether they say no OR they say yes. They mean well, and maybe they're assuring themselves as much as anyone, but it's still 100% up to you whether it counts.

(*But not really because I have no authority to grant such permission.)

If this is what you enjoy and what you love and it brings you pleasure or fulfillment, then everyone else can take a flying leap into a vat of fecal matter. It surely counts if you count it. If this is the most you can do because of depression, then it's moot how useful or not it might be, and it might make your mood/outlook worse to be unkind to yourself that you can't do more.

If your goals are to be a famous, well-paid novelist someday then the water might get the slightest bit muddy. Writing these snippets is certainly better than doing nothing at all, but your skill for the parts you are avoiding (like any other unused skill) will atrophy over time, and you'll likely have to step up your holistic game before you start to write anything that you might want to submit. In your particular case, Jere, you are likely to find that you're tremendously good at small snippets, world building, and really neat characters that you've really thought through, but may have trouble tying those together with a cohesive narrative or coming up with a compelling character arc that spans a whole work. And of course that is assuming your depression picks up, moves to barbados, and lets you work for a year.

Imagine yourself as a basketball player who has been shooting some hoops from the freethrow line and the three-point line, and gets into the occasional pick-up game. You might be quite good at sinking shots and decent at the game, but it's not the same as the practice you'd need to go pro. You're going to have to learn to move in on the basket, pass, lay up, and move up and down the court for over an hour. You will be in a much better place than anyone who had done nothing, though.

Then again you'd possibly be really good at micro-fiction or poignant vignettes. Or simply at writing works with strong characters and intense moments but a weak overall plot arc.  (You certainly wouldn't be the first published author with such clear strengths and weaknesses. Shakespeare was generally terrible at plot. If the intensity of each moment weren't so fucking awesome you'd probably notice that except for MacBeth, most of his works drag a little.) Perhaps it might work with your mental illness to consider the kind of writing you work well doing, and not trying to force yourself to be a novelist (or write a novel that focuses on something other than a grand plot arc).