(no subject)
Rather upset at something, and I need to get it off my chest. Putting it behind a cut for those who don't want to read anything of the sort.
...Because I, at least, understand that some matters should be private. (And this is, as I'm ranting this with the other person remaining anonymous here.)
Between several house problems that needed fixing, higher health insurance costs this coming year, new roommates who I had to give a rent break to so that they would be able to afford to stay with me instead of, y'know, having to live on the streets--and one of the two is my cousin, my actual blood-related cousin, the other her husband, so double or triple the bad-karma negative brownie points if I'd ignored their situation--I came to realize that once again, my finances will be going down the crapper in the next one to two years.
The biggest problem throttling down the financial flow is that because of bad health over this last year, I have not been able to write very much. These health problems are both physical and mental (exacerbating each other), and worsened by my financial troubles--a rather negative spiral as they impact each other ever downward. I have finally gotten my health back to the point where I can almost write as much as I used to, but I know that because of the way my finances work, the writing I was NOT able to do for 6-8 months means that it will hit my finances in about a year and a half, and everything will go to shit again.
So I thought, I have this side story, its own universe, that I could turn into a serial and post chapter by chapter online via Patreon.
Now, I already have a Patreon; I use it for "sneak peek premiums" for those interested in seeing early exclusive content--book covers a full month or more before anyone else, literal sneak peeks at chapters I'm writing, really old story manuscripts, so on and so forth. That's a monthly thing, and you pay X amount, and get all the content being offered up to that amount--if there are premiums for $1, $2, $5 and $10, and you pay $5, you get everything from the $1 and $2 categories as well as the $5, but nothing exclusive to the $10.
But Patreon has a separate format that is directly content-related: You produce a thingy, and people subscribe to buy that thingy when it is produced (usually art, writing, music, etc). You can buy as many things as you like in a month as get produced, or put a limit on how much you'd spend in a month, all voluntary and from what I understand easily enough monitored. My idea was to do a serial story, as I said, and just charge chapter by chapter, not much, etc...
So I posted on the "Fans of..." site asking if people would be interested on this, wondering what their opinions would be. One person posted five thumbs-up signs, okay, fine, good to know. The next person did not say "No thank you, not interested" or even "I do not like serials, myself." Instead, this person ripped into me by claiming I was triplecharging, demanding that I tighten my belt and stop buying fast food and get a second job...and that last one BURNS in my gut...and basically deriding me in public above and beyond all politeness, acidic scorn that would basically ruin the enthusiasm of anyone who does actually like serials or someone who doesn't yet know either way.
Basically trying to destroy--deliberately or indirectly--my attempt at garnering more income.
Just thinking about it makes the gorge rise in me, the bile, the gall, the urge to vomit like a lump swelling in my throat, I am so upset.
At first, I tried to ask them where the triple charging was coming from, because I didn't see it. The only non-new content that would be offered might be short stories where they had gone out of print in those anthologies and the rights had been returned to me. Then I thought they didn't understand how serials worked--basically like multi-issue storylines in comic books.
Turns out they remembers Stephen King's attempts in the 90s at making his readers buy one of his books chapter by chapter, for $2.99 a chapter, and that he lost a shittonne of fans, they hated it, he ended up offering it as a book, blah blah blah, and revealing to me that this poster on the FB site personally hated serials and tried to call me out as a veritable social pariah because I was asking for people's opinions on whether or not they (As individuals!) would be interested in this.
(seriously, having to pause to take a pepcid ac, now)
...I should point out that 1. Stephen King is not a serial writer and it is as different a style as assuming that a person who knows how to drive an automatic transmission knows how to drive a stick shift. 2. Charging $2.99 for a chapter is fucking ridiculous, even for Stephen King, because you could buy a Harlequin Romance (50,000-60,000 words) for $2.99 in the 90s, and I am quite certain his chapters were nowhere near that long. 3. Nowhere did I say exactly how much or how little would be offered, and I certainly did not use a ridiculous even by 2016 standards charge of $2.99 for a single chapter of any size at any point in my post.
They then went on to demand I cut corners, tighten belts, get a second job for minimum wage. All of it under the assumption that I have never tried to get a job. I have not been officially employed for payment by anyone since 1994--BUT NOT FOR LACK OF TRYING. The last time I had even a volunteer job was in the early 2000s.
The assumption that I have cable t.v. to give up was galling, because I live in a fucking broadcast shadow where I get precisely 1.5 stations--24 hour Christian clear as bell, no thank you; and a very fuzzy KVOS that is hard to see even on a good day, hence the .5--and I would HAVE to get cable to watch television, but I don't HAVE cable of any sort. I do not watch television, I have not watched television since they fucking cancled Firefly, and I would not waste money on something I do not do! (Hell, even my Netflix access is on someone ELSE's account, which they graciously allow me to do.)
It's like watching a rich guy telling a homeless person to stop buying $5 lattes every day "...and then you'll soon have a lot of money saved up!" THEY HAVE NO FUCKING CONCEPT OF MY FINANCIAL SITUATION, MY HEALTH SITUATION, OR MY EMPLOYABILITY.
But it's not just the vicious attack on my integrity or the assumptions that I don't fucking know how to tighten the belt and budget hard--I, who learned to "live" on $30 a month for YEARS--that burns my esophagus. It's not even the "Poorer Than Thou!" smug attitude of this person who assumed that they know how to budget and scrimp and save in some superior way to me.
It's the ASSUMPTION that my writing is "not" worthy of being paid. It is the ASSUMPTION that this serial story, THIS BRAND NEW CONTENT, would somehow MAGICALLY spring out of the toadstool from under some fairy's arse without any effort on MY part. It is the ASSUMPTION that my writing an entirely new story IS NOT A FUCKING SECOND JOB IN AND OF ITSELF--and that I should somehow NOT GET FUCKING PAID FOR MY HARD WORK.
...And by the way, I DO know how to write an engaging serial. It was through my serially posted Harry Potter fanfics THAT I GOT FUCKING NOTICED FOR PUBLICATION IN THE FIRST PLACE. I had an EDITOR at the SECOND BIGGEST PUBLISHING HOUSE IN THE WORLD BEGGING ME to look at the chapters I had not posted yet! That editor, btw, is now the lead seniormost editor under the editor-in-chief for her particular sub-house; she is the person in charge of overseeing all the romance stories for Berkley (someone else does all the women's literature side of things), which is part of The Berkley Group, which is part of Penguin Random House, now the single largest publisher in the world, period. A major editor LIKED my serial writing. So yeah, I think I could handle it.
But this person had the GALL to try to destroy me in public...because THEY did "not like serials."
...I am having a hard time coming up with suitable words to describe how hurtful and stressful this is. I could resort to epithets and ranting and raging in four letter words flamed a hundred feet high, but it still would not fix the fucking problem.
...So I deleted every last one of my comments trying to explain the whole thing publically, and clicked Hide on every single one of their smug, snide, derisive, denigrative, destructive posts, and then informed them that they could contact me in private to discuss the matter, because such things were not suitable for a public conversation.
And I cannot help but wonder how much they're going to bitch about me to their friends for removing the conversation from public view, because they just seemed that viciously snotty. The ironic thing is, if they try to screencap and Share any of it, it will only further underscore how INappropriate their behavior is. I did unload my mind in a private message to them (which as we are not Friends, I have no idea if they will even notice or not, as that sort of thing goes to the Other inbox on FB, not the main one). But at the end I did state that they are free to post, "No, I'm not interested in that" on the thread, and only that, as THAT is an approrpiate level of response.
Rather than, y'know, trying to scorch, irradiate, and sow the ground with salt where anyone might otherwise actually like the idea of buying serial chapters, poisoning anyone who is as yet undecided with opinions of such unmitigated gall.
As I pointed out, I don't go insulting and bitching about THEM in front of a prospective boss or any prospective coworkers when they're trying to get a second job at that place...and that is exactly what they were doing to me. NOT an appropriate conversation to have in public.
~Lotm
...Because I, at least, understand that some matters should be private. (And this is, as I'm ranting this with the other person remaining anonymous here.)
Between several house problems that needed fixing, higher health insurance costs this coming year, new roommates who I had to give a rent break to so that they would be able to afford to stay with me instead of, y'know, having to live on the streets--and one of the two is my cousin, my actual blood-related cousin, the other her husband, so double or triple the bad-karma negative brownie points if I'd ignored their situation--I came to realize that once again, my finances will be going down the crapper in the next one to two years.
The biggest problem throttling down the financial flow is that because of bad health over this last year, I have not been able to write very much. These health problems are both physical and mental (exacerbating each other), and worsened by my financial troubles--a rather negative spiral as they impact each other ever downward. I have finally gotten my health back to the point where I can almost write as much as I used to, but I know that because of the way my finances work, the writing I was NOT able to do for 6-8 months means that it will hit my finances in about a year and a half, and everything will go to shit again.
So I thought, I have this side story, its own universe, that I could turn into a serial and post chapter by chapter online via Patreon.
Now, I already have a Patreon; I use it for "sneak peek premiums" for those interested in seeing early exclusive content--book covers a full month or more before anyone else, literal sneak peeks at chapters I'm writing, really old story manuscripts, so on and so forth. That's a monthly thing, and you pay X amount, and get all the content being offered up to that amount--if there are premiums for $1, $2, $5 and $10, and you pay $5, you get everything from the $1 and $2 categories as well as the $5, but nothing exclusive to the $10.
But Patreon has a separate format that is directly content-related: You produce a thingy, and people subscribe to buy that thingy when it is produced (usually art, writing, music, etc). You can buy as many things as you like in a month as get produced, or put a limit on how much you'd spend in a month, all voluntary and from what I understand easily enough monitored. My idea was to do a serial story, as I said, and just charge chapter by chapter, not much, etc...
So I posted on the "Fans of..." site asking if people would be interested on this, wondering what their opinions would be. One person posted five thumbs-up signs, okay, fine, good to know. The next person did not say "No thank you, not interested" or even "I do not like serials, myself." Instead, this person ripped into me by claiming I was triplecharging, demanding that I tighten my belt and stop buying fast food and get a second job...and that last one BURNS in my gut...and basically deriding me in public above and beyond all politeness, acidic scorn that would basically ruin the enthusiasm of anyone who does actually like serials or someone who doesn't yet know either way.
Basically trying to destroy--deliberately or indirectly--my attempt at garnering more income.
Just thinking about it makes the gorge rise in me, the bile, the gall, the urge to vomit like a lump swelling in my throat, I am so upset.
At first, I tried to ask them where the triple charging was coming from, because I didn't see it. The only non-new content that would be offered might be short stories where they had gone out of print in those anthologies and the rights had been returned to me. Then I thought they didn't understand how serials worked--basically like multi-issue storylines in comic books.
Turns out they remembers Stephen King's attempts in the 90s at making his readers buy one of his books chapter by chapter, for $2.99 a chapter, and that he lost a shittonne of fans, they hated it, he ended up offering it as a book, blah blah blah, and revealing to me that this poster on the FB site personally hated serials and tried to call me out as a veritable social pariah because I was asking for people's opinions on whether or not they (As individuals!) would be interested in this.
(seriously, having to pause to take a pepcid ac, now)
...I should point out that 1. Stephen King is not a serial writer and it is as different a style as assuming that a person who knows how to drive an automatic transmission knows how to drive a stick shift. 2. Charging $2.99 for a chapter is fucking ridiculous, even for Stephen King, because you could buy a Harlequin Romance (50,000-60,000 words) for $2.99 in the 90s, and I am quite certain his chapters were nowhere near that long. 3. Nowhere did I say exactly how much or how little would be offered, and I certainly did not use a ridiculous even by 2016 standards charge of $2.99 for a single chapter of any size at any point in my post.
They then went on to demand I cut corners, tighten belts, get a second job for minimum wage. All of it under the assumption that I have never tried to get a job. I have not been officially employed for payment by anyone since 1994--BUT NOT FOR LACK OF TRYING. The last time I had even a volunteer job was in the early 2000s.
The assumption that I have cable t.v. to give up was galling, because I live in a fucking broadcast shadow where I get precisely 1.5 stations--24 hour Christian clear as bell, no thank you; and a very fuzzy KVOS that is hard to see even on a good day, hence the .5--and I would HAVE to get cable to watch television, but I don't HAVE cable of any sort. I do not watch television, I have not watched television since they fucking cancled Firefly, and I would not waste money on something I do not do! (Hell, even my Netflix access is on someone ELSE's account, which they graciously allow me to do.)
It's like watching a rich guy telling a homeless person to stop buying $5 lattes every day "...and then you'll soon have a lot of money saved up!" THEY HAVE NO FUCKING CONCEPT OF MY FINANCIAL SITUATION, MY HEALTH SITUATION, OR MY EMPLOYABILITY.
But it's not just the vicious attack on my integrity or the assumptions that I don't fucking know how to tighten the belt and budget hard--I, who learned to "live" on $30 a month for YEARS--that burns my esophagus. It's not even the "Poorer Than Thou!" smug attitude of this person who assumed that they know how to budget and scrimp and save in some superior way to me.
It's the ASSUMPTION that my writing is "not" worthy of being paid. It is the ASSUMPTION that this serial story, THIS BRAND NEW CONTENT, would somehow MAGICALLY spring out of the toadstool from under some fairy's arse without any effort on MY part. It is the ASSUMPTION that my writing an entirely new story IS NOT A FUCKING SECOND JOB IN AND OF ITSELF--and that I should somehow NOT GET FUCKING PAID FOR MY HARD WORK.
...And by the way, I DO know how to write an engaging serial. It was through my serially posted Harry Potter fanfics THAT I GOT FUCKING NOTICED FOR PUBLICATION IN THE FIRST PLACE. I had an EDITOR at the SECOND BIGGEST PUBLISHING HOUSE IN THE WORLD BEGGING ME to look at the chapters I had not posted yet! That editor, btw, is now the lead seniormost editor under the editor-in-chief for her particular sub-house; she is the person in charge of overseeing all the romance stories for Berkley (someone else does all the women's literature side of things), which is part of The Berkley Group, which is part of Penguin Random House, now the single largest publisher in the world, period. A major editor LIKED my serial writing. So yeah, I think I could handle it.
But this person had the GALL to try to destroy me in public...because THEY did "not like serials."
...I am having a hard time coming up with suitable words to describe how hurtful and stressful this is. I could resort to epithets and ranting and raging in four letter words flamed a hundred feet high, but it still would not fix the fucking problem.
...So I deleted every last one of my comments trying to explain the whole thing publically, and clicked Hide on every single one of their smug, snide, derisive, denigrative, destructive posts, and then informed them that they could contact me in private to discuss the matter, because such things were not suitable for a public conversation.
And I cannot help but wonder how much they're going to bitch about me to their friends for removing the conversation from public view, because they just seemed that viciously snotty. The ironic thing is, if they try to screencap and Share any of it, it will only further underscore how INappropriate their behavior is. I did unload my mind in a private message to them (which as we are not Friends, I have no idea if they will even notice or not, as that sort of thing goes to the Other inbox on FB, not the main one). But at the end I did state that they are free to post, "No, I'm not interested in that" on the thread, and only that, as THAT is an approrpiate level of response.
Rather than, y'know, trying to scorch, irradiate, and sow the ground with salt where anyone might otherwise actually like the idea of buying serial chapters, poisoning anyone who is as yet undecided with opinions of such unmitigated gall.
As I pointed out, I don't go insulting and bitching about THEM in front of a prospective boss or any prospective coworkers when they're trying to get a second job at that place...and that is exactly what they were doing to me. NOT an appropriate conversation to have in public.
~Lotm