STATEMENT: Aiming to get Paid for My Writing by Marketing to Publications; Plan to Use Lextopia for Other Things, Unsure What Presently
I fractured my heel in a bike accident back in October when a delivery driver rear ended me. The impact sent me flying off my bike. Looking back, I'm amazed that I landed square on my foot with enough bullet time to figure out how to avoid a wall or fence before falling on a shoulder, somersaulting, or whatever I did to avoid any further damage to my body (not even any additional scratches!).
I used crutches starting that night until sometime from the beginning to the middle of January. My foot still hurts and will likely continue to hurt for awhile. I've been doing physical therapy twice a week since December and, at minimum, will likely continue to the end of March. Even after I finish PT, the pain will likely continue and stretches will likely need to continue for awhile.
I relate this story to explain why my time management sucks lately with two nights of PT a week and stretches that I need to do at night on other days. The past week ended up a doozie. I went out both Thursday and Friday, so that left only Tuesday open and free to do my stretches. By this weekend, the soft tissue in my leg and foot has gotten damn sore again, reminding me of the importance of making sure I stretch.
In addition to having free time reduced from injury, I've also made some progress in my book/bachelor project writing and novel. Paying attention to and mulling over current social tensions and how they affect how people relate and reading a lot into general social science topics that touch upon the project (but not the actual historical events or the utopian theory) have both yielded some useful material to work with. Today I wrote about two pages of outline that address topics wells and did so in a succinct and concise fashion, both of which I aim for.
If you've paid attention to my social media, you'll have seen that I've started writing in the novel again. A couple weeks ago, I wrote a little more than five pages within a few days, after not having written for about three months since I had broken my heel. I would have thought that being bedridden and people having more understanding about me not being able to leave home, I would have had more output. Apparently such results don't happen when one's brain gets all muddled, one's body doesn't want to do anything, and when moving from one side of the apartment to the other has become such a hassle because using crutches requires a lot of energy and don't forget the planning that it takes to move efficiently with a bag to carry things then maneuver around things. On the bright side: I caught up a lot on TiVo watching.
I've also reached the point that I want to get paid for my essay writing. The wife insists on encouraging other people to get paid for their writing. When they're about to post a thread on Twitter or post an esssay on a blog, she encourages them to market it to publications out there. The topics of those threads or essays tend more toward cultural criticism of science fiction, fantasy, and around alternative viewpoints don't come from a straight white cis-guy, so I can appreciate why she doesn't insist on me marketing my essays as much as other people. Besides, this insistence of her's rubs off on me passively, anyway, so she doesn't need to direct her efforts toward me.
Once many years ago, someone once tried to urge me to try writing movie reviews for publications, too. I didn't really have the confidence then, nor did I think that I had the time to spare. Apparently my confidence level has increased since those many years have passed.
Straight up, readership, I haven't received enough Ko-Fi contributions to continue posting my essays here on the Lextopia when I might be able to find venues for my writing elsewhere. I don't plan to completely abandon The Lextopia. For one, researching markets provides a whole new venture that could prove interesting and worthwhile to comment about. For instance, I just checked out In Our Times, a radical democratic leftist labor-focused publication that has some worthwhile viewpoints to keep eyes on. It doesn't provide a great venue for the current essay I want to market, but maybe someday. Maybe I'll post about that research here and there.
When I do publish essays, I plan to post links here to them. I might occasionally come up with something that doesn't feel appropriate for publication in some other venue. Maybe I'll have other matters that I want to advocate about quickly or just has a more personal angle to them. I don't know, but I'd like to continue using the Lextopia as a way to keep up communication with the public in one way or another about stuff that just has a better place on a blog than a publication.
If you have any idea of publications that I should look at to consider marketing my work to, though, please don't hesitate to reach out to me in the comments, through social media, or through an e-mail. I think the e-mail link/fields on the right side of the screen should still be functional. . ..
Thank you for reading up to this point.
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