Friday, February 13, 2015

Fundraisers, and Why Artists Ask You to Back Them

Photo by Sarah Lyn Eaton
Steps in Being a Writer (as I have discovered them in my personal journey, so take it with many grains of salt)

1) The first step in being a writer is to write.

2) The second step is to finish something.

3) The third step is to let someone else read it. This is the stage for beta readers, where I want to know if the story makes sense? Did you enjoy it? Did you care about the characters?

4) The next step is a hodgepodge of waiting for feedback and getting sick waiting, of wanting it and not wanting it at the same time. It’s where the artistic crisis of faith comes into play and you doubt every word you wrote and you’re not sure anyone will like your story, EVER. That feeling never truly goes away, for any artist, but it does lead you to…

5) Believe in yourself, that this is your path, or let it go and find another. Which you’ll consider for half a day, seriously, until you remember there is no other path.

6) Accept that no story will ever be perfect from the gate and learn how to edit yourself, how to craft your story the way you want to tell it. I often have multiple people reading during this stage, where I get a little more insistent with my questions. If all you give me is “I liked it” you might as well kiss me with death-lips. I’m glad you liked it. But there are a lot of good writers out there. I want you to want to read it again. And I repeat this step until I am satisfied.

7) The fourth step is to send it out, pray to whatever deities you believe in, and cultivate fortitude. There will be way more rejections than acceptances. If, like me, you aren’t sure about the market for your stories, you might start with smaller non-professional paying anthologies, magazines, and e-zines before submitting to professional markets. Seriously, I thought I understood how many rejections might come my way. I was wrong. If you’re lucky, you’ll get helpful feedback with your rejection. But when publishers have to sort through hundreds of stories in a timely manner, you can’t expect it.

This last step is where dreams can wilt.

I started sending stories out to non-professional paying markets while I practiced my story crafting. It’s very common to be offered $30 for a 6000 word story when the going rate is .06/word professionally, which would be $360. That’s a $330 pay cut for the experience and exposure. And I get it. Start-up publishers would like to pay more but can’t, though they still want the talent to come in build their reputation.

So far, I have sold my stories for a split share of royalties, because at the end of the day, if someone wants my story, I want them to have it. That’s the reason I chose this path. To share my stories. Not to make money (hopeless artist). But I am hoping that along the journey, that will happen as well (hopeful artist).

It’s what we all hope.

I submitted a story for consideration to an e-zine that can only pay $15 a story right now, but I had an early story that fit their theme and I would be happy to be included- and ecstatic to get $15 for my writing right now! A lot of publishers hope you will sell them your story for exposure, which is good, but it’s like asking a band to come play for a night in your club for exposure, or asking an artist to paint a mural on your building for free because people will see their work. And it is exposure. Which you can do once in a while. And most artists I know do it more than once in a while. Because the path is more important to us. Too bad the taxman didn’t feel the same way.

The last 6000 word story I wrote was the child of three days of story crafting and world building and question answering and outline/draft typing, stopping only to eat and sleep and clean the cat litter. It was followed by five days of exhaustive editing and fleshing out. I kept track. I was working ten hour days to finish a story that will maybe, eventually, earn me money. The more I write, the shorter each step gets, and the better my work gets, which will hopefully mean more stories will sell. It’s a strange teeter-totter.

Where the Fundraising Part Comes In
Many writers and young publishers have turned to the world of fundraising to procure the funds needed to produce a new book, hopefully including payment to the authors, too. Fundraising is similar to ways in which artists have historically been aided. Those patrons who enjoyed the art, music, literature, or theatre, etc. but could not do it themselves would pay artist’s bills while they produced for the pleasure of the discovery.

To be an artist means you make difficult choices as you pursue your craft, each step of the way fighting society’s expectations of and for you. So why should you give some of your well-earned money to artists? Because what would this world be like without art? Without Beethoven or Eric Clapton? Without Shakespeare or Tony Kushner? Without Walt Whitman, Maria Ranier Rilke, or Mary Oliver? Without Meryl Streep or Sir Ian McKellan? Without Vincent Van Gogh, Mary Cassatt, Kandinsky, Michelangelo, or Andrew Wyeth? If you go to the movies, you already support the arts!

And you could help support and encourage the birth of my next story.


The way these campaigns work is, if you feel inclined to donate, you become a patron of the arts and what is known as a “backer” with several rewards that include offering you a reserved copy of the book by helping in advance. The money is not taken from you until the campaign is over. If we don’t reach our goal, you don’t lose any money, the book doesn’t get funded, and we probably publish it anyway, because our stories are our children and we want to set them loose in the world. And then we hope for royalties after the book sells.


You could be a revolutionary. Donations start as $1 but for just $12, it also gets you a copy of the finished book, plus a book mark featuring art by Jennifer Campbell-Smith. You may think even a dollar doesn’t matter, but to a starving artist trying to find their way in the world, every dollar counts. You can’t lose. Either you ultimately don’t have to fork any money over, or you become one of the people who made the birth of a new work of literature possible (something you could brag about). 

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