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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Monday, December 23, 2013

Just Another Mendicating Monday

That's mastication, actually.
In which I use "rage boner," "totes magotes," and an ironic picture of a dog still gnawing away at a bone to try to get Writing About Writing a little love.

So for two years running now--the life of the blog--I have done a post about every two months* reminding all of you wonderful readers of a couple of things:

A) My ability to improve the quality of Writing About Writing is entirely up to you.  

I work on this blog for about 30 hours a week. I pay the bills (after a fashion) with two other jobs--teaching and being a househusband to my family.  I put in about 50+ hours a week before I ever sit down to write. My ability to write higher quality articles, get some copy editing, and put up more frequent offerings of fiction (as well as some of the longer works I've written) are contingent on W.A.W. being a little more self sufficient instead of a labor of love.

B) There are TOTES MAGOTES things you can do to help Writing About Writing that don't involve spending any money.

*It's actually been more like ten weeks since I last did one of these posts.  I was a little out of it for the two weeks surrounding the baby birth, and not up to my usual par.

How can you help?

1- A donation.  Our Paypal button is over on the left. We're not looking for a "Christmas miracle" here, nor am I demanding a threesome-friendly live-in maid before you will see an improvement in W.A.W.'s quality (though if any of you are threesome-friendly live-in maids, you should...you know what, maybe let's just let that pass for now). A few dollars goes a long way towards our optimism and sense that we're not utterly pissing away the best money earning years of our life on some frivolous shot at the moon. I won't say I fall asleep every night crying about the fact that I don't even make half the current minimum wage, but.....

No....I won't say it.

So, if we've kept you entertained (and maybe even laughing) for hours upon hours, maybe the price of a movie or book wouldn't go amiss?  Don't forget that though I would love to reply to everyone extensively, that would quickly eat up all of my writing time--though I greatly appreciate every single donation, no matter how small, different levels of donations will get different responses from me.

However, every year one of our appeal posts lands during the holidays.  I know you have a lot of people you're buying gifts for, and this isn't the easiest time of the year to find extra cash for supporting arts and entertainment.  If you're strapped for cash, there are always other things you can do for Writing About Writing that are super helpful, won't cost you a penny, and only take a minute or two.


2- Turn off your adblock for the chrisbrecheen.blogspot domain.  
We get a penny per ten gillion unique page views (or something--math is hard), but only for people with no adblock.  Most people surf the web with adblock on--as well they should! But it is actually really hurting the websites you like.

Then you scratch your heads when the site shuts down because its creators have to go get a desk job at collections, and you think "Man, that site was really good.  I wonder what happened."  YOU HAPPENED, YOU PARASITIC DILLHOLE!!!

Um.....er.....I don't mean you personally, of course.

You can turn off your adblock for a single domain, but have it remain on for the rest of the web. (You should do this for any site you like because you are a good person who doesn't suck.) Simply click on the adblock icon and choose "Allow This Site."  Blogger and Adsense are Google affiliates, so none of the ads you'll see here will be pop ups or too annoying and they are likely to be relevant.

But don't just click the clicky unless you genuinely see something interesting. (I have some friends tell me they "hella" click my ads all the time.)  This sort of "help" actually isn't helpful--Google tracks IP's, watches behavior, and has a ten thousand trained monkeys scouring every click for fraud.  Chances I won't even get paid, and I may even get kicked off of Adsense and be forced to give handjobs for crack on the cruel streets of Oakland. Then your "help" will destroy my will to live and I will shut down the blog--but not before writing a fifteen part entry about how you smell like soup and no one should ever put their mouth on your bits.

Neither of us wants that.  Just click if you are genuinely interested in an ad.  Just turning off your adblock will be enough otherwise.

3- Subscribe. 
Success begets success.

Writing industry peeps are starting to get a whiff of Writing About Writing. I have had at least one person in the industry tell me they are watching me with some keen interest. They will gauge whether I am small potatoes or "srs bzns" based on the number of subscribers I have--basically how much self promotion infrastructure I have set up should they take a chance on me and publish a book.

You don't even have to really use the feed.  You can "Like"/"+1"/Subscribe/whatever, and then immediately turn off the feed or ignore it or whatever if you aren't really interested in Following W.A.W..  The supportive part is just having the numbers.  That's basically my e-peen, and when I whip it out, it brings all the publishers to the yard.

4- Share the articles you like on social media.  
Share the shit out of those fuckers.

My friends already all hate me. They beat me up at parties and shiv me repeatedly at conventions. I was shot twice last year--once with an RPG to the face. If I try to share any more articles, they will hang me from a flagpole by my underwear (and no one wants to see that).  You guys will reach a lot more people if you share an article or two you like.

And if you really want to help, dig though The Reliquary for one of your favorite old articles and share that.

5- Click the "Like" buttons.  A lot.
Google search engines are like Cyberdine Industries at this point.  You can't fool them with SEO. Like buttons are the only way.  If John Connor had had a few more +1's on G+ the machines probably wouldn't have sent Terminators back in time to kill him.

6- Comment or drop me a line. 
It's been a crazy year. I got four (and a half) death threats.  (The half was someone calling for my death.) Plus one angry boyfriend who says he's going to beat me up if we ever meat [sic.] because his girlfriend cried out my name during sex.

I wish that was a joke. I really, really do.

Just hearing from people who are reading and enjoying is SUCH a wonderful change of pace from the rage boners I'm usually getting smacked with....in the face.

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