March 11, 2015

How to keep writing when money is scarce

Photo by JoãoBacalhau — Photo by JoãoBacalhau

Savannah Grace asked: "Would you mind me asking a personal Q? I just see how well you are doing with social media and how much influence you have. You are doing an amazing job and are a writing machine. I'm just running into a huge financial problem right now which puts me in a very bad situation for my writing career and may have to give it up. I'm at the point where I feel I really am on verge of making the whole thing work financially.... but... but... How do you do it? And are you at the point where you can live from what you make now as an author/blogger? Trying to find some inspiration here."

Thank you, Savannah!

Let me begin by saying this.

I have started writing not expecting to make any money at all, but purely for therapy. So I set out to adjust my life in such a way where my lack of money wouldn't inhibit my writing. Surprisingly, I started making money via book sales and donations, and even landed a ghostwriting gig through this blog. Here is what happened, step by step.

November 30, 2014

THANK YOU FOR YOUR DONATIONS TO HELP MY DAUGHTER

by Ksenia Anske

I feel so much right now, my heart is bursting. You lovely loving human beings, you have donated a total of $1183.45 to help my daughter recover the things she had lost to a burglary. She told me that all those shoes that were taken, she won't be replacing, but instead will buy a new laptop, since her old one is dying, to she can make more art and more beautiful covers for me. She asked me to give you this message (and she drew the picture you're seeing above):

November 29, 2014

My daughter's apartment got broken into, ART SUPPLIES GONE

by Ksenia Anske

You, my amazing readers, asked me to throw this post together, so we can help my daughter, who makes all my book covers and is a graphic design student in California, recover what was stolen while she was in Seattle, visiting me and her dad. She just called me, curiously very composed, and informed me that their apartment (she shares it with several roommates) had been broken into, turned upside down, and many things are gone. Whoever did this, took my daughter's art supplies, ALL OF HER SHOES, clothes, her Xbox, her roommates' 2 TVs, and, worst of all, both of her passports, American and Russian.