Patreon Update

[k_a_webb]

I have no patrons at Patreon, so I'm thinking of shutting it down. If I was making a little income from it I would leave it as it is, but I don't see the point in expending the extra energy, of which I have so little at the moment, on something that's not helping me towards earning money from my fiction. At the moment I'm barely going on my website - all I'm doing is posting Case, before moving onto something else, so I need to change that, because I'm certain I missed a raffle. That doesn't really matter, because no one's entering them and no one seems to be reading at the website, so I really do need to think about exactly what I'm doing with that. Finishing stories, obviously, is the most important thing, but it's hard to do that when I get so few comments. With my ghostwriting I get input, people tell me they like what I write, which makes it easier for me to focus on that... and it does help that I'm getting paid for it as well.

Being able to make $1200 from my original fiction is now the thing I'm aiming for and to do that I think I'm going to put the novellas at the top of my list, so I can put them online (although I'm still searching for an easier way of doing that, because I don't want to ring the IRS to get an EIN due to my phone phobia), as well as finishing the stories I've started posting, so I can start publishing them as well. What I need is more time, which I won't be getting until 2015 I think, when we're in the annex, because then, I hope, I'll be able to sort everything out better than I have now. The plan is to buy some things that will help me stay organised - like a nice white board for me to write down everything I'm working on.

Comments

[moonvoice]

I truly truly doubt it's a writing quality issue. :( But it really does SUCK to get a lack of feedback on work you cherish and put so much hard effort into. The majority of my writing before last year got almost zero feedback in general (and I'm talking nearly...um...4-5 years of publically accessible fiction), and it gets so discouraging - and yet I look back on some of those stories and I really don't think they're any lower quality than what I'm writing now. So it's just hard to know why some things get comments and some don't. Sometimes it's time and place, and I think reaching your audience - I didn't know most of my readers were Tumblr folk, until I got a Tumblr account. Will Terrell (the Youtube video dude) might help, he's a sweetie, and he just wants to remind you (and other creative folks) to stick out the tough parts.

And thank you for putting up the link!

Also, with your work being fully original - I don't know if you've been doing it, but consider listing it on Goodreads when you feel so inclined. :) This is legal and within their ToS - and as long as the stories are *complete* (or complete within a series) and about 10k words or higher, you can start linking back to your work and increasing its profile. A lot of people don't know they can do this (you can do it with completed fanfiction too, actually - I checked), but it's a good way to just sort of...increase your profile. So anyone who is searching certain titles or authors will come up with your work there too. :)

[k_a_webb]

Yeah, I'm up to over three and a half years worth now, so it's a lot of work, and I've posted a lot of words. All I'd like is for someone unusual, someone who doesn't usually comment, to tell me that they read something, as there are people I know read what I write, although they don't like everything. At the moment it really would help me to feel like it's worth going back to my own worlds, because there are times when I don't know if there's any point, until I reread what I've written. Then I do want to go back - it's just a case of finding the time around the work that does pay. I'm certain that will come with time and sorting myself out a space that is purely for work, as I don't have that right now. My desk is currently the place where paperwork goes to collect dust. :(

I'll do that with Goodreads when I have something finished that is 10,000 words long. At the moment I have a lot of snippets and beginnings that I want to go back to - it's just finding time, as I said, and working out where the story's going, because that can be an annoyance. There are some things I know I can finish pretty quickly, though, one I have some time.