Now I'm Just Confused

 When it comes to Medium, I'm always getting thrown a curveball. For the entire time I've had work on the platform, every time I think I have something figured out, the opposite happens. Like today when I checked my monthly earnings. After making a few strides last fall, I ended up with only $0.03 earnings in November and a big fat $0 in December. I thought this meant that impactful and lasting royalties came from non-fiction content rather than the creative content I had been posting. So I started the A Taste of Money series and nothing. Few reads, no bites from paying members. Then I post another poem from last year's prompts, and I immediately earn $0.03 in a day. After about eight days, I end up earning $0.10. Go figure. 

I know that this doesn't account for all of the other variables that dictate who gets paid and for what, but this is showing me that it would be much easier to stick with poetry that I know I can put in publications (that aren't of my own creation) and get things moving. 

In other jumbles of confusion, one of the platforms I create content for (day job stuff) has completely changed its ways, leaving me without a clear picture of my future with them. What was once a great place to come and go as I pleased for work has now turned into a highly competitive cutthroat environment. While it helps for writers' work to to sell faster, it's leaving me without a way to grab the work that I want and get it done without the fear of someone coming up and writing an article out from under me before I get my thoughts together. I worked for this platform specifically because you had a choice between being highly competitive and taking the slower route, giving customers the content they wanted without twenty other people trying to steal it from you. 

So how do I make these changes work for me? I don't know, because it looks like to get the work I want, it's going to be a game of waiting until midnight on the first of each month to grab something before someone else gets it. Not only claim it, but actually sit and write it as soon as I get it. That just doesn't work for me. And because of the rules on these new changes, it is up to the individual clients to change the way they buy work for it to resemble the platform I used to know and love. I know it's only been a couple of days so far, but if it continues to look like I can't even attempt a consistent work pattern on the platform, I would probably be better off concentrating on creative work that is less likely to pay the way this work did, but would remove a huge level of stress. Did I ever tell you about my love/hate relationship with change? 

Dids and Didn'ts

Now that we are well into the latter part of 2018 (seriously, where did it all go?!), it's time to take stock of all the things that have been accomplished, and those that are yet to see the finish line.

I DID get what I think is my final Kindle Worlds payment. I'm actually not sure it's the last payment because it's a strange amount per book, and the actual royalty statement is not available because KW royalty statements were always considered in beta and therefore rarely show up.

When these titles were still available on Amazon, I would earn paid a whopping $0.69 per ebook sold. If it was fully read during the very short time it was available as a Kindle Unlimited title, I would earn just over $1. This royalty payment? It was $0.49 for each of the three titles. Seems to me that this was what they were saying was going to be the final estimated KU pages read after the titles were no longer available. So they considered that the last person that purchased the KU titles and hadn't read them would only read half of all three of them. Okay. That's a weird way to read a series.

I DIDN'T complete my goal for Camp NaNoWriMo in July. No surprise there. I rarely do. However, I DID come out of July with 21 pages written, so it's still a win in--and for--my book.

I DIDN'T complete a reading challenge I gave myself last year. I was going to read the entire Baby-sitters Club series mostly just for kicks, but also for YA research. I had also planned to come full circle by writing an article or essay about the experience. Unfortunately, I've read only seven so far. It was a combination of not being able to justify the cost (totally tax deductible expense as research for a writer, I just didn't have the Amazon money on hand) and not being able to stay away from all of the places where I get free books. Those had to be top priority to continue getting free books, so those took up a lot of my reading/reviewing time.

I'm still going to finish the series, but I might only get around to reading a few books per year. I hope I can manage a little more this time around because I really would like to move on to Sweet Valley--if the publishers ever decide to include all the spinoffs on ebook. 

Now I just have to check my list and see what more I can get in the DID column by the end of August.

Where I Stand Today

I'm really trying to avoid throwing my hands up in the air and screaming. The reason I was in such a mood yesterday (if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you definitely saw it) was because the last significant writing client has left me. This client praised me on my work and always gave me good feedback, so the ending of the relationship so abruptly came out of nowhere. It also took 98% of my weekly income away.

Technically, this client and I only know each other as seven digit numbers through a job brokering service, though I am well aware of what website I was writing for, but still -- it's a shock to log in one day and see that you are suddenly blacklisted by the client (the broker company actually uses that word) and you get the dreaded "this client does not accept articles from you" message. Only last week I was promised by this client that I would be getting some more work soon. This is why it just doesn't make sense. And I cannot get an explanation even if I wanted one -- blacklisting prevents messages from being sent or received.

This is what I ran into all weekend:

To be fair, I still have royalties from past work plus a few great clients who are easy to work with and I work hard to do a good job for them. I just can't pay everything with those jobs.

So I spent yesterday looking for the usual writing jobs online only run into a wall of scams. These scammers are not even trying to be subtle anymore. What frustrates me the most is that it's been less that 48 hours since I stopped getting any work and everyone around me is jumping to the "quit and get a real job" speech. Usually they hold off a couple of weeks before that comes up. Not this time. I'm not taking it lightly either. I know that if I take what they consider to be a stable, decent job that I will never pick up my pen again. I would be done with writing permanently because it would be a waste of time. I would have real work to do. Which means I would constantly be frustrated because I would have all these stories that need to get out. If they thought I was unpleasant before... I don't think they would like the full-time employed me.

This situation is putting a damper on working with Camp Nanowrimo for the second half of the novel. I'm not inspired, even though I have an outline to follow. I don't really feel like it's a priority anymore, which I guess is proving a lot of people right that I need something more than what I have now. I just don't know how to get it.

What does this all mean? All of the stuff above was just ranting to get it all out. I'm NOT giving up on writing (I don't realistically think I ever could), I may have to move up my release date for the novel, and I am open to part-time work that's not writing related -- it just can't consume my life. It would also be great if that part-time work didn't involve pets or people. I'm allergic to both. ☺