Patreon Problems

I’ve been on Patreon for a couple years now, and the more time I spend here, the more I think it’s just not a great format for writing, though I think it works great for visual art. (If anyone has ideas on how to make it work better for writing, that would be very helpful, and much appreciated!)

Things like when I tried to share my novel were just…not convenient. (What I really love, for that kind of parceling out of a longer work over an extended time, are fanfic sites. AO3 is just a lovely format, and I wish there was something like that I could use the way I try to use Patreon.)

But the real, main problem I have with Patreon is very much an issue with me, and not the site: the format of the fundraising just doesn’t make sense to me, as someone who has large-scale, long-term goals, rather than several small milestones to reach.

If my goal is to save x amount of money to purchase ISBNs, how do I convert that into a monthly goal? I can’t say “I need to make x amount of money per month,” because actually what I need is to make x amount of money for y months, or maybe y amount of money for z months.

And meanwhile I feel obligated to fill my page with smaller goals. If I make x amount of money per month, I can do this, and if I make y amount of money per month I can do this, and if I make z amount of money per month, I can do the thing I actually want to do. So in order to fit in with the format of Patreon, I’m setting all these goals I don’t have the time, energy, or desire to meet.  And I’m spending money on those things that I would rather be devoting to my actual, long-term goal.

Plus, I really hate deciding, okay, this one thing I wrote is worth this amount of money, this thing is worth more; only these people can see these things, and only these people can see these things and those other things—it isn't enough just to support me, you have to support me THIS MUCH every month to see this thing, this thing that I wrote because I wanted people to read it, not because I’m desperate to increase my monthly income by $1.

So. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with Patreon moving forward. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Year in Review/Coming Up

It’s been a busy year. Not, I suppose, from the perspective of my readers, but in distinctly un-artistic ways, it’s been a lot.

It’s just past eleven, and I’m writing, tonight, in between baking Christmas cookies. I’ve been trying lately to maintain a better sleep schedule, but some rebellious part of my brain insists that baking is a late-night activity.

2018 has been my first full year working a fulltime job. It’s also the year I bought a house, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and OCD. I tried new meds (which WORK!). I got two guinea pigs, three hermit crabs, a fish, and a snail. I tried dating and decided it wasn’t for me. I wrote almost exclusively indulgent crap under a pen name, for no purpose but fun. I made boring, grown-up purchases, like crock pots and blenders, address labels and Christmas trees. My new house has a piano, and I finally bought a TV. I’ve been working through my complicated relationship with the church, and though I haven’t found the place where I belong yet, I have some good leads to check out when all the holiday chaos dies down. This week I got a puppy. (More on that later.)

It’s been a big year for life. It’s been a slow year for writing, especially as I try to work out a good schedule with all my new responsibilities.

I’m not going to make any promises, because the balancing act is still a major struggle. But here’s a bit about what’s been going on, and what my thoughts are for moving forward:

I have one major goal for 2019, which is to start my own small press, so that I own my own ISBNs, and am ACTUALLY self-publishing, instead of technically being published by Createspace or Lulu.

Over the last twelve months, I’ve continued to work slowly on my next poetry collection, which will be called Small Scars. I’ve also begun work on a short story collection. This is going to be called The Shoemaker Prince, and will be made up of two longer stories and several much shorter ones, all fairy tales and fairy tale retellings. There may also be another chapbook in the works, similar to thin but about asexuality, tentatively titled Dear Somebody.

My goal is to get back to weekly fairy tale blogs; I have content outlined for the first three months of the year. For my church blog, I’ll be aiming for one post each month. I’m also considering monthly book reviews; in theory these will all be of Beauty and the Beast retellings for the next year.

One thing that remains really difficult for me is Patreon. I’m not getting much use out of it, primarily because I just don’t find it a useful format for my purposes.  There will be a post about that soon, explaining my struggles with it and asking for your feedback. For now I’m putting it on the backburner.

Despite the changes and challenges of the past year, and despite the fact that I genuinely enjoy my current job, my long-term goal is still to write and publish fulltime. As always, I appreciated your support as I work toward this goal.

The Match Girl

And the quest continues.

(The quest, for those of you who may be wondering, is to drag out a happy ending, kicking and screaming if necessary, from every story Hans Christian Andersen ever wrote.)

(Well, maybe not every story. But a lot of them.)

I believe Andersen is what I’m going to call a Religious Optimist. Basically what that means is that for a lot of his work, you have to shift your perspective for a thorough understanding, because his definition of a happy ending is based on a strong faith and a crappy life.  Which means death=heaven=happily ever after, as opposed to the general misery of daily life.

If the idea of returning to school didn’t fill me with horror and dread, my big thesis paper would totally be on this topic. “Happily Ever After: The Religious Optimism of Hans Christian Andersen.”

The facts: Andersen was a deeply religious, deeply depressed gay man in the nineteenth century. We have documentation on this from the most reputable of sources, i.e. Andersen himself.

Just try to comprehend what it would mean, the level of love and joy in Heaven, to a man who was so sad and alone on earth.

And my man Hans, he’s a realist. Does a homeless child alone on the streets in winter get whisked away by her fairy godmother and become a princess? Of course not. Life doesn’t work that way. But can a girl with no chance of a happy, healthy life on earth be happy and healthy in Heaven?

Absolutely. That’s, like, a given.

Here’s the deal. You’re an orphan living on the streets in the dead of winter. You survive on selling matches. Shockingly, not a hugely profitable career.

You die. Of course you die. You hallucinate and you die and you welcome it, because life is hell and now you get to be where the hallucinations are. What is there to live for, anyway? You’re tired, and you’re hungry, and you’re cold. Everyone you love is dead already, and everything always hurts.

Why would you want to be alive?

There are days when every thought you have, every step you take, every sight you see, brings only sadness and pain. We don’t all get to be princesses. The world doesn’t work like that. Sometimes you’re lucky just to survive. Sometimes it’s not surviving that’s really lucky.

If I ever get my hands on a time machine, the first thing I’m doing is getting Hans on some antidepressants; poor dude needs them almost as much as I do.

12 Turtles

Today we’re gonna talk about a story I found in my collection “The Turnip Princess,” which is all stories compiled by Schonwerth. (Guys they’re amazing.)

So it’s a pretty basic story. Think “The Boy Who Set Forth to Learn What Fear Was.” Same basic pattern. You’re trying to win the hand of a princess, so you go and spend a long weekend at the local haunted castle.

There are a lot of things that can happen when you spend three nights in a haunted castle. Demons might go bowling, with your head as the ball and your ribs as the pins. They might roast you on a spit. They might peel off your skin. The ghosts come. The ghouls come. Every night you die, and if you’re brave enough you wake up in the morning alive.

Each night it gets worse. The third is the climax. And on this particular third night, in this particular story, there appear twelve turtles the size of washbasins.

In order to win the princess, you must kiss each one of these twelve turtles.

Now, fairy tales tend to have a lot of euphemisms, granted, but I don’t think that’s what we’re dealing with here. Schonwerth and his translator tend to be pretty direct. All this dude has to do on his final night in the haunted castle is kiss some turtles.

Which brings us to the next thing about Schonwerth. He actually did that thing we like to pretend the Grimms did, where he wandered around collecting stories from random people across the country. And then he just wrote them down. Didn’t edit, didn’t clean them up, just wrote them down.

So these ridiculous stories he’s telling are all stories that someone told to him. Educated people, uneducated people, old people, children, mothers and fathers, people from the city, people from the country—we have no idea who.

For this particular story, I like to imagine it being told by a small child. A girl of six, perhaps.

“And then the demons boil him into soup!” she tells Schonwerth, very excited.

“Oh? And what happens next?”

She pauses, considering. “And then there are turtles.”

“And what happens with the turtles?”

“He’s gotta kiss ‘em!”

I just love Schonwerth so much, guys. There’s so much personality in his stories, and not even his own personality, a good chunk of the time.  I’ve talked a lot over the years about collective storytelling, about folklore as a conversation we’re having throughout history. Men like Schonwerth make our conversation partners feel like real people again. And it’s beautiful.

The Cottage

I bought a house!

As long as I’m rearranging everything else in my life, I thought this would be a good time to rearrange my writing, marketing, and social media presence as well. Now, these things aren’t going to all take effect right away, since I’m working on them in the middle of getting set up in this new place. But here are some things you can expect moving forward.

For a fairy tale blog, I get bogged down in church issues a lot. To prevent this continuing in the future, I’ve started a separate blog exclusively for church issues. For the first few months things are mostly going to be recycled, but I’ll have new content up in a while.

I’m also preparing to start a series of book reviews for every Beauty and the Beast retelling I’ve come across. And more poems are going to be posted as I continue to work on my next book.

Over the next few months, keep an eye out for updates on goals and rewards on Patreon, new content, and information about my upcoming projects. I’ll try to make sure all content is on Patreon, as well as whatever site it originates on, so if you want to keep track of everything, just head over there; things are free to read unless I’ve specifically stated otherwise. Remember, financially supporting me on Patreon gives you access to my novel Lindworm!

This is my house

We're gonna blame the lack of recent content on this thing. New blogs and general updates coming soon; stay tuned!

In Defense of the Beast, Part Two Hundred Eighty Seven

You are a little boy. Ten, maybe eleven years old. Your parents aren’t here; you don’t know where they are. Maybe there’s a war. Maybe they just left you here because they didn’t want a child under foot. It’s been a long time since you’ve seen your parents. You used to miss them. You used to cry for your mama in the night.
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You have a new mama now. She’s much nicer than your old mama. She always pays attention to you, and she hugs you and kisses you and holds you when you’re sad or scared. But you don’t stay eleven. And it begins to seem…strange, how affectionate she is. It makes you uncomfortable, but you don’t know why. You don’t say anything, because she is your mama, the only one who’s been here for you, and surely she knows what she’s doing. And then she asks you to marry her. You say no.	But you hardly think of them anymore. You have new people to take care of you now. These people aren’t your family. They’re your employees. You think they care for you, at least a little; after all, you are their prince. But it isn't the same. They don’t hug you. Their children don’t want to play with you. They call you master and prince and sir, until you think you might forget your own name, it’s been so long since you’ve heard it. One night, a strange old woman comes to the door, and all the grownups turn to you. You are young, a little spoiled, a little afraid. You tell them to send her away.
She doesn’t take it well. You are not the bad guy. It wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault.

As you have probably noticed, I like Beauty and the Beast. A lot. Yesterday I saw the Disney musical at my local community theater—and oh my goodness, I know I’ve said this before, but I am head over heels in love with how awkward and adorable the Beast is in the second half.

And I know there isn't anyone actively arguing with me or anything, but I felt the need to defend him. Again.

I know it’s been a really long time since I’ve been around—sorry. I bought a house, and now I’m in the process of moving into a house—more about that later—and I’ve been so busy I’ve hardly had a chance to write at all. It’ll probably continue being slow going for the next month or so, but I’m working on it. Stay tuned.