By the Campfire with Stuart

Patronage of the arts is nothing new. My use of Patreon is also not new, although I stopped using it at the end of last year. It had been a useful tool for me, and my patrons at the time provided invaluable encouragement and support. However, I did not feel that I was reaching new readers with it, and that is an important goal for me. The way I presented myself on Patreon was probably too scattered to capture the attention of new people. In addition to talking about my books and related works, I also posted about non-writing creativity, such as my photos on Morguefile.com and my audio files on freesound.org.

Late last month I decided that I would try Patreon again. This time I would approach it in a completely different manner. My profile would only be focused on writing. My page also would not be set up to use the monthly payment model like before; instead, I would have it set up so that I would need to actually produce content of value to be paid at all.

As you might guess from the title of this blog post, I'm going to be talking about both money and books. I run a small business (two, in fact), and business people talk about money. However, some people aren't comfortable with "money talk in public," so if that includes you, then this blog post is probably one for you to skip.

There have been countless observations about money throughout the thousands of years that we humans have abstracted value into some form of currency. One observation is that the less you have of it, the more you think about it. This isn't just a matter of jealousy of those who have more. Many everyday needs such as food and shelter are typically met by spending money. If you don't have it, your options are very limited. When you can't afford those basic needs (and assuming you're not in a position to "live off the land"), thinking about money to pay for them is inevitable.

What does this have to do with books? Well, naturally, despite giving away some books like Wolf Block and (on some platforms) No Fanfare, I also have books that I sell. I would like to make book sales my primary income and one that covers at least a frugal cost of living, but I am very far away from that.

I am a big believer in making technology work for you automatically. In this blog post I am going to share a few ideas for indie writers to get some easy automation working via IFTTT. Their service allows you to connect the dots between online services, so an event in one service triggers an action in another. If you look on the web for examples of how to use IFTTT, you will run into a lot of examples that seem fun but are not particularly productive. I'm more results oriented, so the examples I show here are intended to help you with your indie publishing rather than merely amuse you. If you are a business-minded author, you know you have to be productive, and hopefully these suggestions will help you with that.

These examples are easy and simple (no tech experience needed) while still being useful. If you are technically inclined, you can do much, much more using IFTTT services such as openHAB, Maker Webhooks, and others intended for developers and "makers." To get started, though, take a look at these solutions as a way to get started. You can always add more later.

I have mentioned, in varying levels of detail, that this year holds some unusual challenges for me and that my life will be fairly chaotic in the coming months. What I did not predict, however, is that I would have my attention pulled away so significantly by health concerns. I did not particularly need a reminder that health and fitness are important, but events in the past few weeks have certainly served to underscore that. Luckily, and I can be truly thankful for this, nothing has been particularly serious. The incidents that have cropped up in the past month have been just disruptive enough to make me more wary of larger problems, as well as the need to proactively take better care of myself. I am sharing this on my blog not to simply talk about myself, though. I am mentioning it here to encourage other writers (and everyone, really) to also take a moment to consider what they are doing to stay healthy and fit.

There are quite a few things that I could write about this week for my writing blog. I'm sure that if I tried hard enough, I could somehow work in a political message following the inauguration of President Trump, but I will leave that for others. I am somewhat tempted to address the issue of writing for the purpose of entertaining a large audience versus writing for literary art, but at least for now I will leave that for others also. For this blog post, I will focus on two recent milestones that I celebrated this past week.

One reason to celebrate was that I finished another novel first draft. This was the novel that I began in November for NaNoWriMo, and although I had hoped to finish it earlier, finishing it in about two-and-a-half months is substantially faster than spending years on manuscripts, which I've also done. My "worst" writing time has yet to be determined, because I started a novel in January 1985 and I have not yet finished it. I treat that as sort of a joke, although I do have plans to finish it eventually. This week, though, I was just glad to get to the end of the first draft of this much more recent project.