Weekly Writing Intentions: Saturday, Sept 16, 2023
Hit five hundred subscribers and offering people a chance to become a patron!
Daily Diary, Day 1111:
How did I do this week?
Exercise was steady, but not pushing it. Average was 94, walked all but one day, last 3 days with cooler weather, walked twice, and included 20 minutes of chair pilates 3 of those days. Writing was very up and down, but I did end up averaging more than 500 words a day, even with some days where I didn’t get any writing done at all.
I also was able to maintain my post schedule of doing this post every Saturday, Tuesdays doing either an Historical Tidbit or an Authors’ Corner post, then on Thursdays doing a recommendation post. I am pleased that I have been able to maintain this schedule for a month and a half, and even more pleased how the experiment of putting up Dandy and the Dognappers for free on the newsletter worked.
What are my next week’s intentions?
Exercise goal is to do 2 walks for more days, increase the number of days I get in chair pilates, so that I will do more than 90, minutes, but with more variety. In addition, I hope to up the writing to get more like 700 words a day average.
Taking a leap into offering people chance to become patrons of this newsletter.
Definition of Patron: “a person who supports with money, gifts, efforts, or endorsement an artist, writer, museum, cause, charity, institution, special event, or the like.”
Yesterday, I got a slew of new subscribers, I think because I mentioned in my other newsletter the series of Historical Tidbits I have been doing, and this pushed my total subscribers over the 500 mark. I saw this as a sign to make change I have been thinking about for some time.
So, I finally decided today to institute a paid subscription option for people who would like to support the newsletter financially so I can continue to offer these special posts and to continue to publish free versions of the shorter work (with background material.)
I believe this means that at the bottom of this post if you click on the subscribe (or if a subscriber, click on upgrade to paid) you will see 3 options.
None (staying a free subscriber) lists what to expect: Daily posts, Historical Tidbits, Author's Corner, Recommendations, Occasional publication of my fiction.
Monthly subscription of $5, you will get: “Everything free subscribers get plus my heart-felt gratitude for helping me free up time to write more.”
Annual option of $50, you will get: “Everything free subscribers get plus my heart-felt gratitude for helping me free up time to write more.” But it will cost you %17 less.
Some you had “Pledged” to become a subscriber, and I don’t know if that automatically subscribed you once I enabled this. I appreciated the support but feel free to unsubscribe or change to monthly, if you did an annual, now that it is real!
My goal isn’t to make either of my newsletters a source of revenue. Writing and publishing my stories has been and always be my main goal as a writer. However, to keep my books visible and so that people will buy them, I currently have to spend a good deal of time marketing. My intention, therefore, is to use any revenue I get from paid subscribers to pay for some of the marketing strategies that don’t take up much time, so I can drop some of the marketing tasks that aren’t as efficient or productive.
This would free up my time and energy to write more newsletter posts like the Historical Tidbits, Recommendations, and Authors’ Corner posts, which provide all subscribers with some value. Even more importantly, this will help me write and publish my full-length books faster, which should please all of us here.
In short, I have no wish to pressure any of you into doing paid subscriptions, and all of you who open these newsletters, comment and like, or even get secret pleasure out of them, have my heart-felt gratitude. However, I would certainly love it if some of you feel you can afford to do a paid subscription and want to consider yourselves as one of my special patrons!
So, lets see how this experiment works.