The Daily Report

I had some stray observations about the continuing celebrity of my latest parody piece, but they wound up escalating into a separate blog post. I will only note here that far from having run its course overnight, it appears to be picking up speed.

We’re coming up on the end of my first month of renewed MU updates and refocused Patreon activity, and I have to say I think it’s been going pretty good. I’m still tinkering with my short story for the month, but I expect to have it up under the wire. I mean, I could put it up now. It’s complete. It’s just not finished.

When it goes up, I’ll have completed my goals for the month except for the “compile everything into a zine” one, which necessarily must wait until after the end of the month. That will be an interesting experience.

Financial Status

Amidst all the other hoopla, I almost didn’t notice, but we made it! GoFundMe fully funded! Oh, and as of this morning, I guess it’s “and then some”.

The State of the Me

Doing fairly well.

Plans For Today

Focusing on my short story. The title has shifted slightly and might again before it goes up, but right now I’m working with something like “Women Who Make Bees In Public”. As my first monthly short story, I’m not yet sure if it will be public to try to capitalize on the current small spotlight I’m enjoying, or patron-only. I guess I’ll surprise myself.

The Daily Report

Well, over the weekend I posted a thing to the social media content site Medium (more on that in a subsequent post) that instantly went semi-viral, overnight becoming my second-most read piece on there. That got me thinking about posting more content to Medium.

I would never make it my primary outlet because… well, I don’t fully trust it, to be honest. But I think it gives a better format for readers to read and share stories and poems than posting them to my blog does. So I think I’m going to start copying such stuff I’ve previously published here over there, and in the future when I post poetry or prose for public consumption, I’ll cross-post it. Maybe even when I make  persuasive or informational post.

We’re in the waning days of June. The last thing to tick off on my patron promises for the month is the short story, which I have the body of written. I just need to finish tinkering with it to my satisfaction and post it.

Next week I’m returning to Omaha for a family 4th of July celebration and sort of aggregate of other family milestones/observances. I’ve been traveling a lot for family stuff, but this is likely to be the last big trip I take to Nebraska in the foreseeable future. As my siblings and I get more and more scattered and more established in our separate lives, we’re also trying to hold on to the closeness we had growing up, but the future is going to call for different solutions.

I’m not at all sure what next week is going to do for the MU publication schedule. If I hadn’t gotten sick in June, I would have sufficient padding that I wouldn’t have to give it a second thought. It’s possible I could catch up this week, but I have other stuff I need to do. The fact that people are now pledging for MU per chapter completed gives me an incentive to power through, but it also gives me some slack to take a week off if necessary, as no one gets charged for that.

Financial Status

Well, for a while, it really seemed like the momentum was with closing out my WorldCon travel fundraiser in the month of June, but we appear to have stalled temporarily at just a little bit shy of the target. If anybody wants to throw some money in to help put it over the top, I’d appreciate it: https://www.gofundme.com/ae2worldcon

The State of the Me

Made some questionable life choices yesterday and I’m paying the price for them today. Starting work about an hour late, and it’s likely to be a slow day.

Plans For Today

It’s going to primarily be a creative day. Working on my short story, working on Tales of MU, working on Making Out Like Bandits.  I’m also going to be selecting a few pieces to port over to Medium. Old stuff, but stuff that could find a new audience.

The Daily Report

As I noted yesterday at the end of the day, I still managed to accomplish my major goal for the day despite anxiety and household discussions taking up a lot of the day. I’m feeling much better today, back much closer to the carefully cultivated feeling of utter invincibility that’s needed to crowdfund and create.

We are getting near the end of the month here, so I’m looking towards wrapping up the month’s business. In particular, I have a short story pending, and I need to stake out a day to sit down and write it.

Financial Status

I haven’t yet heard from the rest of the household today on this, but my bank did stop jerking around and cleared some of the recent deposits, so my balance isn’t hovering perilously close to 0 anymore. That’s money for August, earmarked for the con hotel, so it can’t be spent on groceries and in theory nothing should be touching it. Still, breathing more easily now that I’m not one unexpected emergency transaction or arbitrary fee away from an overdraft there.

In the meantime, the internet came through for us and I now have ample money in my PayPal account to get groceries for a house of three adults for a week or two, regardless of what the other bank is or isn’t doing. So that’s good.

I don’t feel good about having to hit the emergency button, but I do feel good about contributing more to the household. Me being able to pick up the groceries a couple of times a month should do a lot to alleviate the stress around here. I don’t like to count my Patreon pledges before they’ve hatched, but so far it looks like splitting my Patreon into “Tales of MU” and “author and all her assorted works”, I will have more than doubled my Patreon earnings, which was my biggest chunk of change each month. If so, then I haven’t quite doubled my income (as that’s not my only stream), but it’s still a significant step forward.

The State of the Me

Doing good? I mean, yesterday I started out feeling full of energy and motivation, my first day really bouncing back from being sick and that got derailed. Today I woke up and the proximate problems of yesterday were already solved, so.

Plans For Today

I’d really like for today to be everything yesterday should have been, but the fact that I’ve got the money in my account means I’ve got to go out on our grocery run today. (Before someone says to just send someone else with my card: You Must Be This Privileged for that to be safe.) That’s not going to take the whole day, but it does eat a bit of it.

The Daily Report

Last Friday, when I was too fuzzy in the head to engage in story writing, I instead did an experiment in time use, project management, and game design by trying to design a playable if skeletal RPG system in 8 hours. The results in terms of the immediate goal were mixed, but I feel like I did learn some things about time use and motivation.

One of the things I think helped was that I broke the day up into 1 and 2 hour chunks. I used to consciously break my days up into blocks of about two hours. I stopped because when I was having bad days, that structure became more of an albatross, and as bad days piled up in a row, my “fake it till you make it” approach to keeping things up turned it into a farce. But just because something’s not useful all the time doesn’t mean it’s not useful.

I think trying to make even every good day into a marathon session like that would lead to burnout pretty quickly, but on the other hand, Friday wasn’t otherwise a good day. So I think the 8 hour marathon approach is more something to keep in my quiver of trick arrows for when I need it.

Financial Situation

Mostly unchanged, with the positive note that my WorldCon travel is now very close to being funded. How cool would it be to finish it out today?

On the negative side, my bank has been reeeeallly slooooooooooow to process any of the recent credits from GoFundMe. They do this any time my balance is low, I think hoping that any debit transactions come through that they can ram through to hit with a $35 fee. When the balance was higher (i.e., before I paid for the WorldCon memberships), deposits were posting the same day GFM says they go through. With the balance low, they’re now backed up several days, almost a week. This is the kind of stuff that makes me nervous. Anyone who wants to help assuage my anxiety can leave a tip either through PayPal or my new SquareCash page, which doesn’t quite go directly to my bank account (same kind of processing delay), but is more direct than PayPal.

The State of the Me

Well, coming off a weekend that I spent mostly being sick and tired, I have to say that I am feeling exceptionally well today.

Plans For Today

Well, I had two days last week (Thursday and Friday) where I had planned to be writing and then wasn’t up to it. I also have a chapter of Tales of MU that I’d meant to have drafted last week, which is due for publishing for tomorrow and for Patron preview today. So this is going to be a writing day. I’m going to be following some of the example of discipline and time use that I did back on Friday by dividing the day up into distinct blocks.

The Daily Report

Well, yesterday was not a great day by most measurements. I was exhausted, emotionally down, and having some cognitive issues in the early afternoon. When my writing alarm went off at 4:30, though, I sat down and wrote 2,000+ words for the next chapter of Tales of MU.

Taking a moment to note that I’m taking a week or maybe two off from the satirical posts. It’s not that I don’t believe there is a place for levity in mourning, nor that I don’t think there’s a place for humor in disarming hatred and bigotry, because I do. It’s just hard for me to sustain that vibe for the length of a longer piece right now. Trying to write a Sad Puppy-style satire in the wake of the Pulse massacre is proving especially difficult. The hatred that kills those in the LGBT+/queer communities has far less to do with politically-motivated terrorists overseas than it does with the attitudes at home that constantly position us as other, as both an existential threat and a passive, powerless focus for fear, anger, and resentment.

Mr. Upjohn’s post-con report from WisCon is still forthcoming; it’s evolved and grown a few times since the con actually ended as I took reality onboard , which once again has made parody seem tame. When actual flesh and blood con attendants are decrying the “dystopian” tape lines designating travel lanes on the crowded party floor, I clearly need to step up the game.

The State of the Me

A little the worse for wear. Yesterday I was exhausted from what I thought was just lack of sleep and heat. Today, after a solid night’s sleep and with an air conditioned office(! Thank you, Amazon wishlist gift-giver!)… I’m less tired but still exhausted. Joint pain and muscle pain. This plus a scratchy throat is telling me that I might have caught what’s been floating around the house.

Financial State

Still pretty much the same as before? In a few weeks when July starts, I should have my biggest ever Patreon payday. Until then I’m pretty close to broke, in a household with a budget that’s stretched pretty thin at this point. I’d really love to close out my WorldCon fundraiser before June’s end; even if it does not immediately change my financial status, knowing that I don’t have to worry about how to pay for things come August will lessen my anxiety around money.

It was pointed out to me today that I can put gift cards on my Amazon wishlist, so I did. This could be a way for people who want to help buy the pricier items (like the A/C, or the futon mattress I have listed) without having to come up with the whole sticker price themselves.

Of course, they could always just send money, but there are interesting psychological whatsits at work around crowdfunding. In the past week, someone bought me an $80 piece of wearable computing technology and someone else bought me $130 home appliance. In the same time frame, I got less than $40 in tips and contributions to my travel fund. And I’m not complaining about the form the generosity took, just analyzing it. The watch and A/C unit are both already improving my work life immeasurably.

I’ve had an appreciable number of people over the years flat-out tell me they won’t tip a creator or pledge on Patreon because they can’t wrap their mind around it as a model for commerce, but they’re happy to buy gifts because that’s something they understand.

So maybe the gift card thing will pan out? I can certainly buy enough household staples and personal essentials that it would be worth it. Money is the most fungible commodity imaginable, so if I get $25 for the household to spend on Amazon, that can be $25 freed up for elsewhere.

Plans For Today

It’s taken me basically two hours to even put together this post, so… not much? I have a chapter of Tales of MU to post today. My plans were to both finish it up with a coat of polish and write the first chapter for next week, but I’m not sure I’ll get to the second part of that. On the other hand, yesterday I felt as bad or worse, and I still wrote today’s chapter.

Getting ahead of today: my overall goal for this week was to write four chapters over the five days, so that I can get a week ahead. I have no intention of trying to keep up that kind of pace, because I’ve tried that and even with the understanding of “I’m working ahead, so it’s okay if I don’t hit the mark”, it was pretty brutal. But if I’m a week ahead, I can write two chapters a week and just maintain that padding, and if I occasionally have a kick-awesome week and write a third or fourth chapter, that will hopefully make up for the weeks where I miss one.

The Daily Report

Well, I did it. Turned 36. Hit my perfect square year. I felt a little surreal over the weekend, because after spending a few weeks firing on all approximately seventeen cylinders, I hit the date I’d chosen as the arbitrary starting poitn for a year of total all-encompassing excellence and then it was the weekend and I had stuff to do (in both the “need” and “want” columns) that wasn’t related to my professional goals. I’m guessing this won’t be the last weekend I encounter before my 37th birthday, though, so it’s probably a good thing that I just rolled with it, huh?

Exciting news over the weekend: website FemHype picked up and boosted my writing challenge. It was interesting to see that they drew a connection between my mention of video games and the goal of the challenge being tech-oriented. I’m not disagreeing; I honestly hadn’t thought of the challenge as being related to any particular media. It’s about changing the narratives we see in any medium or storytelling form. I’m told one of the entrants so far submitted an interactive story (Twine-based, I believe), though.

Financial Outlook

Patreon will have me in a good position in July, but it’s going to be a lean few weeks until the end of the month. If anyone has especially enjoyed my work and/or my performance on Twitter and wants to kick something extra into the can, I’d appreciate it. That’s money I can spend immediately on things like groceries, pet food, and cat litter.

We are almost halfway through the month and no one has signed up for my Patreon at the level that gives access to a writing seminar ($25). If we hit the halfway point and that’s still true, I’ll be handling sign-up for this month’s lesson a little differently. I feel like this is the kind of thing that a lot of people would get a lot of value out of, but maybe they have to see it first.

Something also kicked over in my brain this weekend and I started thinking of WorldCon as being in “less than three months” instead of “more than two months away”. My WorldCon fundraiser has gone great, but it needs to keep going. Right now I can go to the con but I can’t afford to stay at the con. Awkward. If we don’t get it the rest of the way, then a lot of money might wind up wasted.

The State of the Me

Doing good! Little tired today. Might be the heat.

Plans For Today

Day one of the week. I’m planning on doing some writing today, not over-exerting because of aforementioned tired. There’s a good chance I’ll wind up going out to do some errands in the afternoon. I’m going to be calling my phone manufacturer about the I Can’t Believe It’s Not A Recall in a bit. Whether I participate now or next month is going to depend a lot on how likely it seems that I’ll get my phone back before my July travel.

The Daily Report

Yesterday was a very up and down day, as I’ve already blogged. People who follow me on Twitter probably noticed how tense I was. My replacement phone is already reported to be out for delivery today, though, and that alone has had a huge effect on my state of mind. I woke up today wanting to do something positive to kick off the day, and as I often do, I sat down in front of my computer with no particular plan in my head, and as I often do, I came up with something awesome: a gender-free story challenge.

The monetary prizes I’m offering are coming straight out of my pocket. It should be easy enough to earmark the necessary funds out of my Patreon when the contest ends, but if you like the idea enough that you want to support it in some way, my tip jar is always open (http://www.paypal.me/alexandraerin). If this is successful, I’d like to do other similar contests in the future, both to encourage more diversity in writing and to get to people to write and post stories that they might think would be hard to sell. I’ve set a goal on my Patreon of doing a quarterly writing challenge once I hit $500.

Financial Outlook

I’ve enjoyed being able to contribute money to the household in the form of buying groceries and ready meals in the past couple weeks, something I haven’t really had the opportunity to do lately, and I was also able to bid in an auction for Con or Bust (and won a Jaymee Goh original handbag for a mere $20), but I am now personally about tapped out, not counting what’s in the kitty for WorldCon in August. My phone-related expenditures yesterday (sales tax on the phone itself, an off-brand case and budget smart watch) used up the last of my major paychecks for the month of June, and I’m not expecting another big payday until the end of the month.

I’m not broke; I have a bit of money coming in that I can use for incidentals, and I do have a bit more padding than I usually do at one week into the month, but I really do have to think of it as padding. I am on track to be starting July in even better shape than I did June, and hopefully I’ll be able to build on the padding.

Just so everyone is clear about why I’m tracking my financial situation in my status posts now: I’m tracking my financial situation. You can send me money. I’m a crowdfunded author. You can always send me money. But if I put information up on my blog, some people have a tendency to react by trying to figure out what they’re supposed to do with it. The answer is nothing.

The model here is, if you like what I’m doing and would like me to do more of it and you can afford to do so, send me some money. Not because I’m broke or you feel sorry for me, but because you value my work and my presence.

(I will also accept money to spite my self-proclaimed enemies, but that should be sent to the con travel fundraiser they tried to shut down.)

The State of the Me

So far, so good?

Plans For Today

This week is a complicated one. Gearing up work stuff, getting the household back in shape after WisCon (and months of ennui and depression), and it’s my birthday. There’s basically no day this week where I’m not going somewhere or doing something, while also writing and posting. So this day more so than any other I’m kind of making a “flex” day. I’m going to write, I’m going to do stuff, I’m probably going to start on tomorrow’s Tales of MU chapter, but… no plans. No demands. No deadlines.

In other words: no rules, just write.

THE DAILY REPORT

Yesterday was a pretty kick-awesome writing day, with a word count for fiction in excess of 3,000 words, split about evenly between new project Making Out Like Bandits and Tales of MU. While I am happy with my output, I did not quite accomplish everything I wanted to yesterday (I’d hoped to finish the MU chapter, and there’s a charity project I need to wrap up my contribution to). It took me longer than I’d expected to get into the swing of things during the day. Fatigue and soreness took their toll.

This morning, I dealt with phone nonsense this morning. It was firmly in the “don’t wanna” column the whole time, but… had to. The general flakiness was getting worse, the habit of getting caught in a battery-draining reboot cycle went from “every once in a while” to “daily” to “several times a day”. After looking at the options, I decided against filing an insurance claim to pay $50 for what would likely be a refurb when I was a month away from my contract’s end, when I’d planned on upgrading… and which I now realize is also my next travel time (it’s the 3rd of July, and we’re spending that weekend with my family).

Non-writing-wise, yesterday, I took stock of where I want to be with the Tales of MU schedule. I feel like I could be doing three times a week, but I also feel like I need to have some reserve capacity. I would also like to be able to offer my MU patrons a premium like seeing the chapters a bit early, which is easier to do if I’m writing two a week versus three (and might give me a better chance to catch slip-ups like “father” for “mother” in the chapter last week, before they go live for the whole audience). I’m still going back and forth about whether to operate that way. I expect I’ll decide next week. Either way, it’s going to be a Tuesday/Thursday update schedule for the time being.

FINANCIAL OUTLOOK

I took the money I expected to spend filing an insurance claim and instead bought a budget offbrand smartwatch. I might regret that, but I’ve been missing the functionality on phone of having a window-view case thing that let it function like a pocket watch, and the options for my new phone in that area are not appealing. I’ve never seen myself as a “smartwatch person” (and was never much of a “watch person”, back in the day), but as the kind of outfits I wear don’t tend to have much in the way of pockets, it can be tedious to dig my phone out to check the time or other simple information requests. I’m also trying to get more into the habit of accessorizing, and having a functional accessory I wear every day seems like a good way to make that work.

I’m trying not to be discouraged that my Patreon total is basically just sitting there. I have been doing not much with it in any kind of organized fashion for basically a couple of years now, and I’m only a week into my first month of actual operations. Yesterday I re-wrote the page to make it more clear what I’m offering, and I also added a patron-only story installment. I’ve been telling myself that there will be a spike of interest when I get my first new short story up later in the month, and again when I do my first monthly zine. I’m honestly not sure what I’ll do if there’s not. Something different, obviously. Just not sure what.

I think it’s something like this: I can get people very interested in supporting individual things I do. I feel like if I created different funding platforms where it’s: “Give me $1 a month for queer romance.”, “Give me $1 a month for political discourse.”, etc., I’d have a lot more people giving me a dollar a month. But if I say, “I do all these things. Give me $1 a month to support any or all of them.”, that’s less compelling. It’s a perception problem, basically. When I was teasing Making Out Like Bandits, I had people tell me in so many words they’d pay money to read that; so far, as near as I can tell, no one has. Because instead of a button that says, “Pay money to read this.”, there’s one that says, “Pay money to support this author and you can read many things.” I don’t know how to solve this, but neither do I have the time or energy or unique email addresses to create an individual Patreon for all the individual things I do.

I mean, the zine thing might change that. Pulling together everything I do and packaging it might make people go, “Ohhhhhhhhh. All this in a month, for $1? Sign me up!” But I need my month’s content for that to happen. So I’m trying to be patient and not give up on the model before I’m able to launch it properly.

I really am in better financial shape as of this month and next month than in preceding months. But not where I want to be, nor where I expected to be.

The State of the Me

A little lingering fatigue. Not much. I slept well last night.

Plans For Today

Have a chapter of Tales of MU to finish and post. Between having some errands to run and business-business to take care of (the phone thing, ordering new business cards), I’m not planning on doing much else, creatively, today.

THE DAILY REPORT

Well, I have a new USB mini keyboard for my tablet, which has several advantages over its predecessor (which was purchased for my phone, and was thus a bit more compact, though once I got my tablet I started using it pretty much exclusively with that.) It has a trackpad and mouse functions, which are not something I will use often but which are nonetheless useful when I want to lie back and write. It also has a backlight that can be toggled on and off, which means I can once again shut myself up in a very dark room and write.

A new keyboard always takes a while to break in. This one I was terrible at for about 500 words, then a seasoned pro after the first thousand. These thousand words formed the basis of something I started yesterday called Making Out Like Bandits, the opening of which is available to read for free on my Patreon. Subsequent installments will be patron-locked. The idea came from one I was considering for a short story, but that format was too small for what I had in mind. Still casting about for a short story idea for June.

ECONOMIC OUTLOOK

In fine shape. I am not where I want to be with either my author Patreon or the Tales of MU one, but I haven’t really pushed the MU one on its own site to its fanbase. I plan on doing so at week’s end, after two weeks of multiple updates so that the idea of paying for regular updates seems less speculative. I am still feeling out what the update schedule will be, but I think it will be possible to put up a draft for patrons a day ahead of when it goes on the site.

Similarly, I expect my author Patreon to pick up a bit when I post my first new short story, and once Making Out Like Bandits has a continuation to read.

Even if they just stay exactly where they are, I will be in better shape at the start of next month than any previous month I have been on Patreon. The WorldCon fundraiser has slowed a bit, but it is already ahead of schedule by a wide margin. I honestly wouldn’t mind if it were to close out by the end of the month so I don’t have to keep rattling the cup every so often all summer, but it’s fine if it just comes in in dribs and drabs, too. The time-sensitive portion of the fundraiser is passed.

One significant expense coming up: I really should have an eye appointment in the next month or so. It has been quite a while. If anyone wants to kick something in for that in particular, I might be able to see to it before my next Patreon payout.

THE STATE OF THE ME

Sore and tired. We got caught in a sudden torrential downpour yesterday while taking my father-out-law mini golfing for his birthday, and wound up freezing and soaked. This aggravated all my muscle and joint pain, which made sleep difficult.

PLANS FOR TODAY

Big writing day. I am basically going to be working on everything today.

The Daily Report

Well, yesterday’s schedule was complicated because of post-con stuff and the fact that I decided to kick things into high gear around here on what turned out to be my first day back. To focus on the positive: I did update Tales of MU at a time when it was still Wednesday, June 1st in most of the United States?

I like the chapter. I think the start of the new book is a good introduction for new readers. I’m excited about it and the story and the world and the characters in a way that hasn’t happened organically in a long time. Through the auspice of Patreon, I also know that I’m getting paid ~$39 for it, which should come to me at the start of next month. That’s about a penny a word, which isn’t great, but having that much more of a direct connection between writing and getting paid does wonders for the motivation.

Financial Outlook

Not bad for now. It’s weird to come back from WisCon with some padding rather than a deficit. I’m really curious to see how the Tales of MU Patreon does when I’m getting more updates up. Best case scenario: it goes up. Long term, I’m going to need more sponsorship per chapter to keep going. I really hope to have $50 a chapter by the end of the month and grow from there. I think that’s doable, especially as I get back to focusing on the kinds of stories I want to read, which are the stories I’m best at writing and the ones that resonate the most powerfully with others.

The State of the Me

While I had my best post-con day yesterday, con living caught up with me unexpectedly when I absentmindedly drank two caffeinated sodas and a coffee with dinner. I stopped drinking caffeine past the early afternoon quite a while ago, but that habit goes out the window at con time. So I was up until something like 4:45 in the morning, and am fairly tired right now.

Plans For Today

I have a good start on a draft of a Sad Puppies Review Books, and I’m reaching out to a couple of people regarding collaboration opportunities. I’d like to get a few blog posts up, but I also might wind up taking a nap in the afternoon.