I have to make money at this

I guess I'm saying this as a heads-up. I keep talking about premium content and not doing it. I actually have two fairly hefty pieces now that I could offer as bonus stories. I want to set up a "backstage pass" subscription option too, where you'd have to go to get into character chats, author chats, and other inside info. And donations... heck, I haven't even set up the page for that yet. Maybe today. This site is set up to use a points system, so I have to do research on that. I've looked into micropayments -- things like, you hit a button and that drops 15 of your cents into my box and sends you to the next page.

My ultimate goal is to devote my life entirely to doing this. Now it may seem like I am anyway, by my output, but fact is, while I was posting both PA and ak, I was doing a double shift. I let some plants die from not watering them, let my house get to an unbelievable mess, left repairs undone and lightbulbs unreplaced, neglected some of my volunteer work, neglected some friendships, and only took the kids to the beach in summer for decent amounts of time because I have a computer with a battery that lasts for three hours. I enjoyed the challenge of the double midnight deadline, but I don't think I could take doing it for, say, 20 or 30 years.

Unless I didn't have to do anything else to earn money.

That's the idea. That's my goal. To do it, I need both to build up my readership -- to go even modestly viral -- and to get you guys in numbers to start sending me money, whether it's a super-sponsor-sized donation, or the price of a cup of coffee. Amount doesn't matter if lots of people do it. Collectively, you can keep a writer in bread.

The big problem I have with promoting and making the financial ask is myself -- or, to be more exact, the part of me that is convinced that my writing is absolutely worthless.

I've been considering bringing this little problem of mine up with readers for a while now, and wrestled with it, and I guess I'm ready now. That part of me actually thinks my writing is worse than worthless: somehow malevolent or harmful.

I know exactly where this idea comes from: my mother. She recognized my talent in both art and writing, but hated my subject material. She decided that part of her job raising me was to train me out of it. That started with ridiculing and condemning me for what I drew when I was a preschooler, and throwing my drawings in the garbage or the fireplace. It went right up to when I was an adult, so inured to her asking me "Why don't you write something worthwhile?" that I didn't even actually see it was an insult to every single word I wrote until a couple of years ago.

She basically thought that writing about violence or anything that remotely resembled magic was morally wrong and a way of inflicting harm on the world, and did her best to instill this message in me. That which was most meaningful and central to me was not okay with her to the day she died, which was in the same month my first novel came out. And since it started when I was a little kid, and she was my mother, I couldn't help but take it very very deeply to heart.

(BTW: anyone who says "I have a low-self-esteem problem" has a minor low-self-esteem problem. People with a real low-self-esteem problem don't see it as a problem. They figure it's okay that they see themselves as crap because they are crap. Been there, done that. I decided when I was still single-digits, "If I am a bad person for telling these stories, then I'm a bad person. Because I'm not quitting." Those of you who've read asa kraiya might here see how I know about the permissions we give ourselves in return for self-punishment we commit to.)

The upshot is that I live in this kind of weird schizophrenic headspace in which I am confident enough about my ability to write that I keep working on improving and developing, and always wanted to be a career writer, but at the same time, am so worried that my content is going to do some kind of damage that I have this strong, life-long urge to conceal rather than disseminate and promote it.

That has affected the writing itself, unfortunately, more in the past than now, though I still see it in early chapters of PA (and mean to rewrite so as to get rid of that effect). It also caused me to screw up in various ways, too long a story to tell here, in my dead-tree writing career. Short version: if part of you wants badly enough to conceal your work and not get credit, other people you are working with will find ways to help you, even unspoken.

And for my weblit, so far, I've done what is comfortable: wrote like a maniac and neglected marketing.

So I guess I am saying, that's going to change, because it has to change. I know I am on the right track. It took me a year to psyche myself up even to start regularly posting (and even so, I needed a kick from Shirley.) Now I have 400-odd posts, an online readership, a lovely new website, fulsome quotes and even promotional blurbs that I managed to pry out of myself with a crowbar.

I welcome all thoughts on anything and everything I've written above. Also, if there is any way you can think of to help, and would like to -- especially about spreading the word -- please let me know.