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? 

The First Seven Days

 My plan for 2021 was to move my weekly blog posts to Tuesday--it would work out better for many reasons, including the ability to get those posts out more consistently. But without a planner to write my little to-do lists, I was in a bit of a mess on the first week of the year. That's changed, because my bullet journal/planner/whatever you want to call it arrived on Tuesday. That doesn't mean my world is suddenly organized, and I know that I have to rush through January without great thought to design, but so far it's getting the job done. And I can't begin to tell you how much I love having an excuse to use Micron pens again. 

So I thought I could easily push out a blog post for the beginning of year yesterday, but then yesterday happened. On my best day it's hard to pull myself away from breaking news, so I usually just settle in and try to absorb what's going on. Needless to say, yesterday's productivity was near zero. 

Now I'd love to tell you what grand plans I have for 2021, but getting a bullet journal planner started was my main focus in the last week of 2020. Beyond that, I'm not sure where to go next. I have released the first article in my series A Taste of Money with a follow-up coming tomorrow. I plan to publish 1-2 articles a week for that one, but what I really need to get out is the publication guidelines so that others can have their chance at publishing work in Frugal and Freelancing. 

I'm still looking into other Medium publications to get my work out there, as well as those good ol' literary journals. I need to make a list and pay more attention to submission dates because I tend to miss some good opportunities when submission windows close before I get the submission sent. And all of my longer projects? Those are all still waiting in the wings for when I get inspired again. And since its January, you know I'm already planning for a project to do for National Poetry Month in April. All this leaves me now with plenty to do, and I better get to it. 

News and Notes from the Writing Desk: September Edition

 The year is going by fast--but then again, it's dragging on pretty slowly too. I'm in one of those moods this week where I feel like I have to get thirty things done all at the same time, which always leads to nothing really getting done. So what have I been doing? It's a varied list. 

To Medium or Not to Medium

While I've been slightly obsessing over my stats on Medium, I know that there's a lot that goes into the decision to publish specific pieces on Medium. While I want to write fresh stuff, I still have a vast backlog of things that I would love to get out there. The question is: should I post on Medium or keep submitting to lit journals? It's not an easy question, and there's no right answer for any and all of these pieces. While lit journals rarely pay, they do get the work in front of people who have a specific appreciation for writing. However, if I publish something on Medium, there is a chance of getting paid for it. Then again, with low views/reads on most of my work, I'm not provided with reader insights that can help me tailor my work to my audience. 

Like I said, not any easy question to answer. I occasionally get discouraged, especially when I know I have a good piece. I just don't know where it belongs, and I don't know how tightly I should hold onto it to make sure it finds the right home and the right audience at the right time. 

Intense Publication Research

Since I have so many pieces without a home, I'm back to scouring all my emails for places to submit. I'm finding it harder and harder to avoid journals with reading fees, but there are still quite a few out there that I haven't submitted to yet. I've also looked into Medium publications, and those are all looking pretty good to me right now. There are plenty of options and I know that these publications could lead to bigger and better things on the platform. The only issue with all the list-making is that I have to not bury this list in my desk. I have to plot, plan, and take action. 

Considering Long-Form Options

Although I haven't been that focused on longer works, I do need to get back to those novels. I'm considering which one I want to work on next. I could take the easy route and start from something that only has a few chapters, or I could tackle ones that are in the depths of revision. I could start completely from scratch. With the way my days and weeks are structured now, I don't know if NaNoWriMo will be an option this year. Too many things are pulling me in different directions, which leaves little time for the writing that comes after both the writing for work and the short-form writing for career advancement. If I get a few more short pieces out of the way, maybe I could make room for the long stuff. But as it happens to everyone, you plan, plan, plan and the world laughs in your face. 

That Bullet Journal Thing

I started a sort of practice bullet journal in just a small, regular notebook turned sideways, because, you know, lefty here. I'm not a huge fan of it right now, but that's why I'm practicing so the 2021 journal comes out pretty and I keep the process fun. That, and I'm not about to jump right in with the more-expensive journal options. 

News and Notes from the Writing Desk: August Edition

 Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, stanza by stanza, things are slowly moving along. I am still rotating in and out of a few projects, but this month I have mostly been focusing on distribution of my work. Specifically, I think I have finally found how to use Medium to my advantage. 

The Importance of Publications

Up until two weeks ago, I had posted my work on Medium without any expectation of having my pieces curated for any publication on Medium. If you get curated, especially by a Medium-created publication, you could see thousands of hits overnight. But there are also many smaller publications--in fact, anyone with a Medium account can create a publication, build an audience, and find a niche group of contributors to supply a stream of new work. 

By accident (or the daily Medium emails I get, whatever) I stumbled upon a specific publication (The POM) that I thought might be the right fit for some of my existing published pieces. So I read the guidelines carefully, as any good writer would, and submitted some of my work. Once I made sure that I had proper credits for my photo, it was accepted, and suddenly I had more eyes on my work than I had in the past year of writing on Medium. Getting into publications? Essential to success. 

Get That $$$

Before the start of August, I had earned exactly $0.01 for my work on Medium. Not really anything to brag about, but I also didn't have to do much to get it. When I started publishing pieces in The POM, I noticed right away that money was coming in. Again, it's not impressive, but so far this month I have earned $0.10, which is a clear improvement from what I was getting previously. As with any website that depends on various algorithms to pay contributors, you can't see exactly how or why money is doled out, but there are a few clues. 

First, I received dozens (in some cases more than 100) claps for my work. After seeing these numbers I immediately went to my dashboard to see my dozens of views. The views were still low, and pretty consistent with previous months (I have yet to get 20 lifetime views on any one piece). That's when I figured out claps. When you clap for a story, you don't have to just provide a single clap. You can clap as many times as you like, leaving a large number of claps from just a single view. Claps also seem to be important in determining which pieces will pay out. 

Views seem to be much less important, but anyone on Medium knows that views have to be from a paid member in order to pay out. Free members who read it are still good, particularly when they like and share it with others, and it still boosts numbers. I admit that I'm still a free member, because I want to be able to pay for Medium with Medium--once I reach a steady earnings of $5 a month, Medium will get a new paid member. 

The Road Ahead

As much as I like placing my poems in The POM, I'm still looking and researching new publications to work with. However, the fact that some of these publications have locked their submission guidelines behind a paywall is very frustrating--and lucrative, probably, which is kind of shady, though completely within the TOS. I'm still creating new work and I want to diversify where that work ends up. You never know--maybe one of these days I'll be in the mood to run my own Medium publication. 

Planning to Plan

Aside from all the new things I discovered with Medium, I've also been looking into starting a bullet journal, rather than trying to manage a calendar, planner, to-do list, and other stuff. I think I can get around the idea of making it pretty with spectacular artistic talent by using a lot of stickers, stencils, and my very favorite skill--collage. I have a stack of Vogues in my closet; might as well put them to good use. 

New Flavors

Lastly, what gets labeled as totally random: I tried a couple of new flavors today. Both good, but I wouldn't try them at the same time. 

                                  

Notice Me: Phase 2

Last week I moved on to another area of my writing career--Medium. This is still a relatively new addition to my portfolio, so I wasn't expected a lot to change with this situation. I didn't write any new pieces to promote, so I selected a few previously published works to promote online. I did manage to get more eyes on my articles, poems, and stories. I promoted four pieces and received six views--and sadly, that's a significant increase from me doing absolutely no promotion. Out of those six views, I only received four reads (and I think it goes without saying, no earnings from the partner program). What's the difference and how does Medium distinguish the two? I don't know. A read could be time spent on the page. A read could mean scrolling all the way to the bottom of the article. It's not clear to me how they determine whether a piece has been read or not.

Another key piece of data that I don't have access to was insights into the type of person looking at my work. On my article details pages, there is a place for these insights, but Medium has declared that my readers' interests can't be determined until I get more views. I do get traffic sources of clicks, but without getting more insight into the readers that browse my work for free, how can I start to create a picture of those who pay for a subscription and would be interested in my work?

I also know because none of my pieces have been published into or curated for a Medium publication, it doesn't get a lot of views without taking the time to promote it. It doesn't end up in the daily emails Medium sends out, and the stats page has informed me on every piece that:

"Our curators were not able to review this story for distribution in topics due to high volume."

Which I interpret to mean "Get a truckload of reviews, then we'll take a look." Not really beneficial when I haven't cracked 35 views a month yet. But this doesn't phase me. I'm going to keep my work here, add more work, and try to craft the right pieces I can submit to the publications I've technically already signed up for, but have yet to submit. 

Now I'm off to the last task of the month--getting new patrons on Patreon. This will be the biggest challenge out of the three, but I'll figure it out.

Notice Me: Phase 1

I promised that I would use February for this task, but I'm already dreading it. As a lifelong introvert, I don't like talking about myself. I don't like to brag, and without that urge to make my accomplishments known to the world, imposter syndrome sometimes settles into those quiet spaces.

But I'm fighting the urge to hide with all I've got. I started this morning by looking through vast lists of free/bargain email lists. There are quite a few out there that are really affordable (under $25 for a listing), and some sites even have a free option. The problem? Even the sites that seem to take almost anything still don't list poetry as a  specific category when filling out the submission form. I know that I can always sneak it in through others like literary fiction or women's fiction, but I don't like doing that when I don't have to. I've never been rejected before when listing in an alternate category, but there's a first for everything.

The hitch with the "free" offerings on some of these sites is that they are provided by a lottery system, which means you aren't guaranteed a spot. That's okay--filling out all of the forms for the chance at a free promo is totally worth it.

This week's challenge? Increased views on Medium. Let's do this.

Goals and Such

It's nearing the end of January, which means I get to check some things off of my 2020 list. I've been working to get a better draft of my TV pilot, but most of that time has been spent working up the show bible, not writing those extra scenes that I need. For coverage, I don't need the show bible, but it does help me see where it could go if the project had a future.

I can also check off the first contest entry of the year. I took a chance on a story I've never sent out before, so I hope I didn't waste the entry fee. Now I'm prepping an application for a residency. The work I'm sending is poetry, but for this particular contest, I have to have a good cover letter to go along with it. Although I think I write a good cover letter, I know how rarely they are read, so I find going through the motions a bit pointless. Maybe that's why all my job applications go unnoticed...

Coming Up in February

I'm dedicated the shortest month of the year for the most frustrating part of my professional life--meeting goals that depend on the actions of others. What does that include? Getting more book sales, acquiring more patrons on Patreon, getting more paid views on Medium, having more reviews on Amazon and elsewhere. I know I haven't tried every possible way to boost these numbers yet, but I do think I'm running out of the most cost-effective (=free) options.

The only other goal for February is to get my Book Spotlight gig back up on Fiverr. Since the posts will now appear here, I need to craft two or three samples before I relaunch. I've been putting it off because I thought I would have moved this blog to its own domain by now, but that's not the case. I'll revisit the idea of moving to a new domain in June. For now, I'm staying put on Blogger.

The Past, The Future, and Don Hollinger's Typewriter

It's 2020, so that means I'm compelled to examine the progress I have made in 2019 and use that to determine what's going to take the highest priorities this year.

2019 -- The Year of the Almosts

There was a lot of things I almost accomplished in 2019. I almost hit my goal of publishing four new pieces. I published three, but that was only because much of my time was getting existing projects into better shape, including 53 total poems in Pieces on Wattpad. I almost hit my Goodreads reading goal of 100 books, but I was four short, even with all of the children's books I read. I almost took a vacation. I almost stuck to a strict budget--until the holidays came around. I almost received one last payout from Textbroker before I said goodbye for good, but couldn't quite hit the minimum payout before the requirement to switch to Payoneer. So now $8.16 is in limbo, and it will stay there until Textbroker realizes what a mistake they have made and returns to providing a PayPal option. I'm not holding my breath for that one, but I just can't click the Close Account button with money on the table, as insignificant as it is.

The Inspiration to Keep Going

I would love to say that the past two weeks have been filled with writing, planning about my writing, and more writing, but it wasn't. I was binge-watching That Girl as it expired from Hulu. It's been three days since I finished it and like all good shows, it has left me with a bit of an emotional hangover from not being able to immediately rewatch it, though it is back on television as of today if I need to get back to it. I haven't felt like that since I watched all six seasons of Community three times in a single year.

What surprised me about watching the show was what my brain chose to focus on. There are so many things it could have been: Ann's super-mod wardrobe, her ability to assert independence when the times didn't call for it, the fact that she could afford a super-cute East Side apartment on haphazard pay (similar to a freelancer's life), or that this show has many similarities to Get Smart, aside from both shows sharing Bernie Kopell. No, what my brain decided needed a laser-like focus was Don Hollinger's career. It makes sense. He was a writer.

But that's still not what really inspired a renewal of effort to get back to my writing. It was the dude's super-cute portable typewriter.

This typewriter only appears in like three episodes--and I should know. I watched 138 episodes in fourteen days. I can't get enough of how adorable it is. I'll certainly be on the lookout to buy one someday, but what the typewriter did was get me to think about how much time I spend not writing, and why I can't fill in some of those gaps. Also, it made me think about all the female writer characters on TV, and I had a hard time quickly coming up with a list. It took me ten minutes to remember Carrie Bradshaw was a writer because her lifestyle--considering her employment--was ridiculously fictional. And all of that leads me into 2020...

2020--The Year of New and Exciting Adventures (Fingers Crossed!)

The first project on deck for the year is one of my pilot scripts. Both of the pilots that I wrote first drafts of have a female lead who is or wants to be a writer. I think that it's important to tell these stories, so I'm going to do everything I can to get at least one script to the point where I can receive script coverage. I want to see where I really stand. Hopefully, I can get a recommend rating that takes the project outside of my hands and on to the next phase.

I'm also looking to not sit on content. I do write a lot of content, and often it goes unseen. There are a lot of factors that go into that, but sitting on a short story for a year before submitting (which I tend to do) is not productive. That's not going to happen anymore. I'm going to keep my goal of published pieces at four for the year, but I intend to post a lot more content on Medium this year. I'm going to merge my love for sitting in front of the TV for a little too long with my ability to write reviews.

2020 will also be the year I get more rejection letters. I don't mean that I'm looking for them, but there is no reason I need all of these unpublished pieces sitting around, not being considered.

In terms of adventure, I'm putting myself on the strictest budget my little life will allow so that I can finally do something big--a vacation, a relocation, attending a conference, participate in a residency program. I don't know what it will be yet, but I know that this is the year I have to do something, otherwise I don't know if I ever will. I'm inspired to do great things and I don't want this feeling to subside, so I'm grabbing it and holding it close. Let's hope I don't end up smothering it.

Happy New Year! I hope everyone out there has big dreams of their own and we can all accomplish them together.

NaNoWriMo 2019: Week 2

I don't want to take up a lot of my writing time working on this, so let's just say I'm still in the game. I am totally a lap behind the rest of the pack, but I'm still in it, I'm still working on it. If you haven't been following the daily posts on Patreon (and why not?), here are the posts from the past week:

Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14

Now I'm getting back at it. 50k in the near future? Maybe!


*A Freelancer's sidenote: What's up with all the follows on Medium? On the surface, that's great. I thought I suddenly had a hot title there. Nope. Three follows in two days, zero article views. I see your game. No follow backs from this gal. 

Hold the Whine

I meant to post this last week. I really did. But at some point, it simply slipped my mind--and apparently my to-do list. But all is well now, and we're back on track for lots of things to get done in October. 

---

Most of the past week has been wasted on writing.

Hold on--this will make sense in a moment.

I've been doing a lot of writing this week. It seems like thousands of words just came pouring out. The problem? I'm not sure how much of it can be used. I've been in a mood. This happens to everyone, of course, but my mood has been seeping into my writing. Everything that's been written has a whiny tinge to it--including the fiction, which was surprising because many of those characters wouldn't be whiners. I know that I'm starting to come out of it, but not before everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I'm taking today to turn that around. Now I have the unfortunate uphill battle of rewriting everything so that I can get back to focusing on what I want to say without being an eye-rolling fifteen-year-old about it.

That, and I have another issue. I have to settle on a project to actually see through to the end. I've been skipping back and forth, with nothing really giving me that drive to see it through to completion. I have to find something, because I need one more finished product before the end of the year (I hit number three with my first-on-Medium piece: "The Ideal Reader Doesn't Exist").

The positive spin on all of this? I've had plenty of time to read while avoiding my indecisiveness, so I just may hit my reading goal for the year. It's the little things...

Making Progress and Moving Forward

Just to see what kind of time commitment I would be making, I decided to start building a new version of TSW on Wix using a blog template. It seems that it would go smoothly, considering I was able to design the homepage and upload a single post in about fifteen minutes.

The biggest issue I see for doing this is moving all of my old posts onto the new blog. There's something like 1700 right now, and Wix doesn't do any sort of automatic importing from Blogger. Of course I wouldn't want to transfer every post, because a few are paid posts and since I'm not benefiting from them anymore, they don't need to make the move. They just need to stay here in perpetuity.

The other thing I've been exploring this week is publications on Medium. Apparently, that is how writers get so many views and have a better chance of getting those important money-making views. I have applied to join one, but I'm still thinking about what my first article submission would be. I've got some ideas, but nothing written yet. That's what I will be working on the rest of the week.

September's Here

It's September. I'm back! I didn't go anywhere, but I thought I would take a few weeks away from the blog to do a bit of a reset, and to get my plans together for the near future. There are a lot of exciting things on the horizon, and I hope I have the right steps to get there.

Hanging Out on Medium

I've been trying to ramp up my presence on Medium. While so far all of it has been reposts of older works or excerpts of longer projects, I am getting ready to start producing more original content for my account. I'm still in the editing phase for what I've written, so more should be posted in the next couple of weeks.

My only issue with the platform is that I can't access all of the data that I need to. I can get data points such as views, referring websites, reads (and how a ten-line poem only gets a 33% read rate is beyond me...)--but I can't get data that helps me understand who pays for a Medium account. I have yet to make a dime from this site, and if I knew the demographics of who pays for their accounts, I think I would be in a better position to craft articles that target a better defined audience. It seems to me that a lot of articles making money in the space where I write is the writer who writes about writing. It's a bit redundant, but I think I can work with that.

Two Down, Two to Go

It's also the time to check in with my yearly goal of getting four works published by the end of the year. So far, I have If It Was New York, Summer 2009 and "A Picture at Sunset" published in Indiana's Best Emerging Poets 2019. I still have to get two more out there. September is usually when the last round of submissions go out, so hopefully I'll get an acceptance before December 31. If not, two original pieces published on Medium shouldn't be that hard to complete.

One Set of Research, Two Stories

I loved researching all things pop culture for that story I was writing set in 1970. The problem? My research led down another path for another story. I'm not abandoning the first story, but I had to see where this second on went. The first story is a lot of teenage angst/confusion/drama condensed into a few months for the main characters. The second one starts in the same era, but spans decades for the main characters. It seems like a daunting task to create a story that will probably have huge time gaps without seeming like it skips a lot, but I think that sharing the research between these two stories will eventually end up making writing both stories a little more efficient.

The Great Website Debate

This blog can get frustrating at times, with a lot of that frustration due to limitations of Blogger. I like that there is the ability to add the other pages, but updating them is quite a feat to get it to look right. I also don't like running multiple blogs on this platform, and I think that merging TSW and Book Review Bin is long overdue, especially since this change may get me more Fiverr spotlight gigs again.

I've always thought about transferring the blog to an actual website, but I don't know if I am ready yet to take on that kind of task. That, and there is always the debate about the cost vs. the effort spent. It wouldn't take much to buy a domain name, but the ability for any money spent to turn into a profit is always on my mind. I don't know if transferring this to a website would give me the ability to break even on domain/hosting costs, which is what I'm looking for before I get started.

And this wasn't the only website I was planning. I've been working on an idea for more than two years now that's associated with books and reading, but like transferring the blog I would need to find a way to make the website profitable. I know that I couldn't create all of the content on my own, and I definitely don't want to be an exposure-only outlet for other writers. This project is stalled until I can find a way to make it profitable enough to pay contributors. This is the time when I wish we could all go back in time and hit up the Social Register to find bored, rich benefactors to fund our work.

I'm still planning and planning. I even tried to make an editorial calendar for content last year, but I never actually got it off the ground. Eventually I will have to execute some part of this idea, or I'm just wasting my time.

Your Call to Action

I can't leave this post without a blatant self-promo section. If you want more of what I offer, Patreon is a good place to start. And don't forget to check out my work on Medium. I'll be back next week with another rousing account from the writing world!

The Daunting Blank Page

I don't know how many times I will say this, but I feel like it's time to say it again: nonfiction is not my favorite. I love to read it, sure, but writing it is a whole other game. I have some ideas, now I just need to put in a lot of effort into achieving the standard I need to reach. That's not easy. I'm trying to look towards inspiring articles and reading articles that in my mind are absolutely perfect, but I think that only makes me see the path as a lot longer than it should be.

Still, I carry on. I'm working on two nonfiction articles at the moment, one of which will partially be up soon because I'm going to try out Medium's series feature, which will allow me to add to an article, sort of like threads on Twitter. I think. I'll have to try out the feature to see what I'm really getting into.

Since I'm working so hard to produce nonfiction, of course my mind is making great strides in the fiction category. While welcome, it's almost to the point where it is getting in the way. Don't worry--all that means is the next project coming out will arrive that much faster.

August Has Arrived

It's August and it's scary close to being the end of the year already. How did that happen?!

As you may have already heard on one of many other platforms, I did get an acceptance for one of my pieces this week. However, when it came to checking the final manuscript for issues, I noticed that the publication left off the last line of my poem. I contacted them to correct the error. I haven't heard back. I have a hunch that it'll be fixed in time, but if it isn't... oh boy. That last line is the difference between the poem being a bit of happy-go-lucky imagery and it being a bit of social commentary, which was the original intention.

I'm also back to work nearly full time (as full time as a writer can spend on creative projects) on Pieces. You'll be seeing weekly exclusives on Patreon again as well as new posts to the project on Wattpad.

Medium has a few pieces that you can peruse, all poetry and short fiction for now, but I'm trying to talk myself into getting some creative nonfiction ready. I've published essays before, but they seem great in the moment, then I read them the next day and they are either flat and boring or skip around too many ideas that don't make it as cohesive as it could have been.

I have a choice between some essays already drafted about my personal experiences in the public education system or I could pivot and start a fresh essay on why I haven't and probably never will read the Harry Potter series. The education ones would have to be scrubbed of as many identifiers of other people as I can manage, but I lived in small communities my whole life and that just may not be entirely possible. And let's call the Harry Potter idea what it is--a bit of click bait, even if it's a solid piece of writing.

That's what is on my agenda for August. What will you be writing or reading this month?

Awkward...

The Professional Awkward

Yesterday was one of those odd days. First, I received a rejection letter for a job application. Huh?

I had already assumed that the company was not interested in me because more than two weeks had passed. That's the standard. It seems weird to get one, especially since the wording was that the job position had been closed, rather than saying it had been filled. Don't get me wrong, I'm used to rejection letters. I just didn't know that companies ever notified you when you didn't make it through the initial application process.

There was also encouragement to apply for positions at the company's other imprints -- this was for an editorial assistant position at an imprint in one of the large publishing companies. But I doubt that will get me anywhere. Though because of applying, I have been left with weekly emails for similar job listings. Maybe I'll try again, but if my resume doesn't change, I'm not too sure interest in my resume will change. I'm thinking even for an entry level job, there's going to be a who-you-know element. Time to network...

The Surprising Awkward

I've been spending what free time I have trying to finish up Here's Lucy because Hulu is going to expire it in a few days. It's been helpful in my research for my latest project, especially when it comes to fashion, but then I had to sit through this episode yesterday (awkward...)

The Not Awkward

The writing. The writing is fully grown and wildly confident--she left that awkward stage long ago. I've signed up for Medium and have started to upload some of my previously published pieces. "Second Shadow" is up right now, along with "Tuesday Morning Hangover." I'll be adding more in the coming weeks. Hopefully I will be able to get new pieces up soon.

I know I sing the Patreon song a lot, but if you are interested in getting a new poem from Pieces tomorrow, go ahead and sign up to get exclusive access.There will be a new piece up tomorrow, and more to come soon on Wattpad.

That's all for now. I'll be over here, working away and hoping the next great idea doesn't strike me just yet... I've got too much piled up for that!