Conversation Post: Answer 4

From: meepalicious at LJ.

What first inspired you to crowdfund your writing?

There wasn’t one inspiration, but several.

I am a control freak. Being out of control was something that worried me about traditional publishing, so, even though I have always wanted to see my book on a shelf, I wasn’t sure about working with someone to do that. They might have wanted to change things that I didn’t think should be changed, especially as I always knew that some of my characters were going to be different to the norm. With crowdfunding I could keep control – as well as let certain things be guided by my audience. Not by some editor who was basing his opinions on what the sales department thought would be the new bestseller. Letting the people who read my work be able to plot stories for me or create characters was important to me and by crowdfunding that’s something I can let people do whenever they want.

Another important thing for me was being able to know where my income was coming from and who liked what the best. Taking donations means that I can do that, with the rentals and adoptions I have a chance to write stories for people I might not have written if it wasn’t for their interest, and with everything that’s happened it means I can put out a plea for money and I may well be lucky enough to get it. If I was traditionally published I wouldn’t be able to do that. Having the website means I can update people on how I’m getting along, on why something may be taking much longer than I planned, and really get to know my readers, which is something I really wanted a chance to do. I don’t want to be inaccessible.

To be honest it was when I saw what people like Elizabeth Barrette, M. C. A. Hogarth, and Lyn Thorn-Alder were doing that I made my final decision. Out of all the crowdfunders I’ve got to know I have to say that the three of them have inspired me the most. We all work differently: Elizabeth writes poetry during her monthly fishbowls; M. C. A. posts her prewritten serials (and the one that got me thinking about different ways of doing things was Flight of the Godkin Griffin, which I loved); and Lyn does a mix of the two with her fiction; while I experiment and try to find what works best for me, because I’m still learning about the whole thing.

Lyn was writing to earn money to help her cat when I first found her work. I’m always a sucker for a fluffy creature in distress, so I tossed some money her way and went hunting to see what it was she actually did. In that order. Cat came first. Now I’m not going to say I like everything she does, but I like more of it that I dislike and she if she’s written something in one of my favourite series of hers I am going to read it. She’s someone I enjoy writing fanfiction for too, although I haven’t been doing as much as I’d like at the moment, and as I know she works around her writing I have great respect for her.

Elizabeth was someone I vaguely knew of before I went to help Lyn. I think even then I was a member of the crowdfunding group on LiveJournal, so I’d see her advertising her fishbowl, but I’m never much enjoyed poetry and that meant I didn’t actually read any of her work until I started posting mine. That was when she started getting into the Donor House collection. Back then I didn’t think I’d have any readers and then there she was, telling me that what I was writing was good (although full of typos back then), that she enjoyed reading what I was writing, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to truly tell her how much having her there, especially at times when I was thinking about walking away, helped me. She’s created characters, a whole world, plotted out a story for me, and pretty much been the best friend you could have when you were starting out with something like this.

M. C. A. is someone I know. I don’t think she knows me. I am a friend on her LiveJournal, but I don’t comment much. Instead I lurk and read, because I love her worlds and her characters. She’s one of the reasons I decided to explore less human characters – her races are so diverse and I realised that’s what I wanted to be writing about, as well as the humanoids. If it wasn’t for her I don’t think the Nox Gadael or the Terra Lepus would exist, because there was no one else around doing that sort of thing any more. When I was younger I used to love the Animals of Farthing Wood and Beatrix Potter, but they were for children, and the majority of the races in more adult fantasy were humanoid – dwarves, elves, even trolls and orcs. None of them are animals, none of them are animalistic, and I was worried there might not be people out there who wanted to read about creature races (or races that are harder to understand for humans because they’re so different), but thanks to her I realised there are people who like to read things that aren’t necessarily on the shelves of a bookstore.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

Conversation Post: Answer 5

From: meepalicious at LJ.

How did you get started?

Before I made the decision to crowdfund I was posting the odd story for a bingo challenge on LiveJournal. None of those stories are canon now, because things changed so much. I set up a separate journal on LJ to post those stories and it was that I decided to use as a place to start crowdfunding. First I posted some fiction that, back then, wasn’t for anything that I actually planned to write, but they were stories that I needed to write. Anyone who is a writer probably knows that feeling.

Then I had a prompt session. I had no idea what I was doing, but it seemed like a good way of starting my crowdfunding career, and it was great fun, although I still occasionally have trouble writing stories for prompts. Sometimes it is because the prompt is difficult and at other times it’s because I can’t write the story the way it needs to be written. Often I’ll have several attempts at a prompt, so I can write the right story, but for that first session the plan was to post them all on the day I got the prompt. I think I even managed to do it. Originally my plan for the sessions was to have them paid by time period rather than word count, which is something I may still experiment with, and I’ve never earnt much from a session, even though I have managed to write some wonderful stories thanks to the prompts I’ve received.

Once that happened I needed to sort out a system for keeping my fiction in order. I have to admit that’s still a work in progress even after two years, but I’m getting there, slowly. When I started I had no idea I’d be writing so much and for so many different collections, because the plan originally was to write for the Donor House (although it was a different place then); the Fae School (which has grown more than I believed possible); the Brotherhood; Thear (because it’s a world I’ve been writing about since I was 15) and write the occasional piece for the others; but then the World Walkers happened, some of the fiction I wrote for the others was found to be interesting, and now I’m writing for 12 different collections that all seemed to be liked by someone.

From then on I wanted to experiment with everything and early on I set up a number of things I’d never seen before but thought would be interesting, including the adoptions and rentals. I also borrowed the idea of people being able to earn something if they commented or linked by putting in place the credit system. That’s something I would love to have more people involved with.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

Conversation Post: Answer 6

From: meepalicious at LJ.

What do you know now that you wish you had known then?

All I wish I’d known is how much our lives was going to change in the last year and a half. I set my website up in March of last year, only to find myself unable to use it because I ended up living with James in two places that had no internet access. We were always planning on moving out together, but we never thought it would happen as quickly as it did, so we didn’t have much of a chance to plan for things, even though we do feel lucky now that we ended up living with such wonderful people. As Christmas passed it felt as though we’d have a chance to both do things we wanted to do, with me having a chance to focus on my writing and James was planning on heading back to college to do some studies in engineering, but then in April he got ill and as he’s still ill now we don’t know what might happen next year. Maybe it will all fade away and he’ll have a chance to do what we planned at the beginning of this year or we might be dealing with it for much longer.

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.