The Cookie Making May Never End
Dec. 13th, 2018 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse Tonight, Shawn will be having a friend over to make gingerbread cookies.
I'm going to go ahead and put this out there: I don't think, at this point, we NEED more cookies.
But, in all honesty, this get-together is about doing a thing with a friend. Shawn doesn't really _like_ gingerbread cookies that much, so I think her plan is to make them in order to bring them to work to give away. I, however, have been tasked to go look for decorations for gingerbread. I made a glance around Kowalski's when I was there earlier, but there wasn't much, surprisingly. I think I will try Michael's cake decoration section later today, on my way to pick up Mason. (It's at least in that general direction, so why not?)
Speaking of cookies.... when I was at the post office yesterday sending off the care package to my cousin, I ran into my old friend Harry LeBlanc. We chatted a bit and he invited me to join him on his lunch break at a nearby Chinese buffet. So we did! Harry was my first writer friend. I met him in the 1990s in a science fiction writing class we were both taking at the Loft. Together, he and I formed Wyrdsmiths, an in-person writers' group that's still meeting regularly to critique writing.
Harry has mostly moved away from writing science fiction, though he just got his PhD in music therapy or some such recently. His dissertation was a rock opera. So, he's still doing high creative work. He's been working with convicted child sex offenders, as a therapist, and I'm impressed as hell that he's stayed at it because that's got to be draining, to say the least.
Anyway, it was really lovely to catch up with such an old friend.
I used to see Harry regularly when I worked at the Immigration History Research Center and he was an IT consultant who could make his own hours. We would get together at the Egg & I and talk for hours, and that's not really much of an exaggeration. I was supposed to only have an half hour for lunch, but I would often be gone for an hour and a half EASILY. (It is well known that you never want to hire me for a traditional 9 to 5 job. My work ethic is very "you don't pay me enough to care.") Those were fun days, though. Harry and i could argue about the craft of writing until we were blue in the face. I'm sure that's partly why we haven't seen much of each other since he left to do his art therapy thing and let the writing dream merge into a different creative venture.
I have a couple of friends who made the conscious choice to walk away from trying to sell their writing and picked another, stronger, artistic call. Harry went to his music and my friend Sean to his photography. I both feel the loss of their writing and completely sympathize with and support their choices, you know?
I mean, look at where I am. A dozen or so books published and not much to show for it any more. It's not like I can say to someone: "Hey, writing is a GREAT CAREER! So fulfilling!" I mean, it _is_, but it's also deeply flawed as a thing to do for the rest of your life. You kind of always have to have some other way to make money, a fall back. That's really a tough way to try to do... anything, really. It's such a shame that art and artists are not more supported in our culture.
*sigh*
Anyway, I hope you all are well and are out there doing your art.
I'm going to go ahead and put this out there: I don't think, at this point, we NEED more cookies.
But, in all honesty, this get-together is about doing a thing with a friend. Shawn doesn't really _like_ gingerbread cookies that much, so I think her plan is to make them in order to bring them to work to give away. I, however, have been tasked to go look for decorations for gingerbread. I made a glance around Kowalski's when I was there earlier, but there wasn't much, surprisingly. I think I will try Michael's cake decoration section later today, on my way to pick up Mason. (It's at least in that general direction, so why not?)
Speaking of cookies.... when I was at the post office yesterday sending off the care package to my cousin, I ran into my old friend Harry LeBlanc. We chatted a bit and he invited me to join him on his lunch break at a nearby Chinese buffet. So we did! Harry was my first writer friend. I met him in the 1990s in a science fiction writing class we were both taking at the Loft. Together, he and I formed Wyrdsmiths, an in-person writers' group that's still meeting regularly to critique writing.
Harry has mostly moved away from writing science fiction, though he just got his PhD in music therapy or some such recently. His dissertation was a rock opera. So, he's still doing high creative work. He's been working with convicted child sex offenders, as a therapist, and I'm impressed as hell that he's stayed at it because that's got to be draining, to say the least.
Anyway, it was really lovely to catch up with such an old friend.
I used to see Harry regularly when I worked at the Immigration History Research Center and he was an IT consultant who could make his own hours. We would get together at the Egg & I and talk for hours, and that's not really much of an exaggeration. I was supposed to only have an half hour for lunch, but I would often be gone for an hour and a half EASILY. (It is well known that you never want to hire me for a traditional 9 to 5 job. My work ethic is very "you don't pay me enough to care.") Those were fun days, though. Harry and i could argue about the craft of writing until we were blue in the face. I'm sure that's partly why we haven't seen much of each other since he left to do his art therapy thing and let the writing dream merge into a different creative venture.
I have a couple of friends who made the conscious choice to walk away from trying to sell their writing and picked another, stronger, artistic call. Harry went to his music and my friend Sean to his photography. I both feel the loss of their writing and completely sympathize with and support their choices, you know?
I mean, look at where I am. A dozen or so books published and not much to show for it any more. It's not like I can say to someone: "Hey, writing is a GREAT CAREER! So fulfilling!" I mean, it _is_, but it's also deeply flawed as a thing to do for the rest of your life. You kind of always have to have some other way to make money, a fall back. That's really a tough way to try to do... anything, really. It's such a shame that art and artists are not more supported in our culture.
*sigh*
Anyway, I hope you all are well and are out there doing your art.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2018-12-15 03:18 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2018-12-19 06:39 pm (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2018-12-19 07:23 pm (UTC)Most poetry markets don't pay at all; most of the rest pay $5/poem or less. There's a good smattering of magazines that pay $10-20, but beyond that, very little. If I remember right, the most I got paid for a poem from a conventional market was $200; I sold a couple to a very fine hunting magazine that always put a poem on the back page, excellent stuff. Since I write a ton of poetry, I had no trouble sending out batches of stuff and making a countable amount of money. But it was a lot of work shuffling shit around and it didn't pay well. I did get a couple of poetry books published, though.
Then I started crowdfunding. At first, it didn't bring in much, but it grew. My readers started asking for repeats of favorite characters and settings. It really grew. The Poetry Fishbowl just turned 11 and is now my single biggest writing project. This week I'm running my Holiday Poetry sale, so there's a ton of new stuff going up. If you want things in sequence, check the Serial Poetry page.
>> I know a couple of part-time poets, so I know that it's around the least-paid writing, only above graffiti.<<
I just never accepted "there's no money in poetry" or "people don't like poetry" as barriers. People will read it if you put it where they're looking and make it about something that matters to them. There's money in anything if you can find an unmet need and meet it.
The coolest thing about crowdfunding is that it lets people ask for what they want and get it. They don't have to wait for some editor to like it first. So I write a lot of niche stuff. I have several whole series that exist because one person supported them vigorously with prompts and/or donations and eventually other folks caught on.
I've seen a few other people do crowdfunded poetry too. In my observation, it's a lot more efficient at making money than slogging through all those damn magazines.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2018-12-20 06:40 am (UTC)Yeah, the lack of lucrative markets doesn't stop most of the writers I know either (poetry OR prose). And now I recall seeing your Poetry Fishbowl (that's you? cool). It seems like you have pretty good support and patronage, yay.
I've been very happy to see crowdfunding develop as a source of income for artists of many kinds (among other things). Though grumpily I still think that our society (including the government!) should do more to support and encourage the arts. But that's a diffent post.