Weather misery leads to writing productivity (and Patreon)

Good afternoon from the most miserable, disgusting, wet, cold November day in Toronto.

It’s the perfect day to stay in, to focus on unfinished projects, to write stories.

Well, theoretically.

There is a 5 months old beagle puppy keeping my mom and I a little bit preoccupied. We tried walking him, both of us separately, but Tucker flat out refused to stay outside. Mom managed to get him to the end of the driveway, and when I went a little bit later, I got him as far as the end of the street.

He made it clear though; he was having none of it.

He really needs about three walks per day to burn off energy. We play with him, of course, and my mom’s yard is quite large and has many trees, so the puppy has a great time sniffing and running and keeping himself occupied. His favorite game is to steal the broom until we take it back, at which point he wants us to chase him with it so he can run like a maniac.

Try not to picture me running around with a broom in my hand.

But today, even the backyard doesn’t entice him. We were out there maybe 10 minutes and when he whimpered in front of the door to be let back in, I took pity on him. I mean, I’m not thrilled to be out in that crap, either. I was cold and wet despite having winterized my attire.

To the north of us, about an hour’s drive, they have snow. Enough snow that young animals and small children can spend hours playing and having fun. But down here along the shores of Lake Ontario, we have heavy rain and temperatures hovering just around the freezing mark. Not enough to make white, fluffy snow.

Just gross.

Anyway, I did spend quite a bit of time playing around with my Patreon page. If you go on my website (not reader) you will see a page heading called Patreon which will take you to it. I have also added a widget in my right margin, right above my selfie. 🙂

I’m still learning the ropes, so I haven’t done a lot of promoting yet, but I will. I’ve been spending my down time here at my mom’s house editing and publishing content I’ve written for the past five years or so and filling my Patreon page with it. As I do this, I’m learning how the platform works, how it displays and how I can fix mistakes.

There is quite a bit of free content on there now, but as I get more familiar, I will lock some of my future content for subscribers.

I had written about Patreon before in a previous blog post, but I had to take it down because the terms I mentioned in it have now changed. Initially, I was going to release content to subscribers by creation, but I have now changed these terms to a monthly fee. I did extensive research into this and I feel that $5 per month is acceptable for both me as the content provider, and you as the reader.

I think the by creation subscription is more apt for musicians releasing songs or artists releasing paintings or other forms of art. For writers, the monthly subscription fee feels more suitable. Podcasters or youtubers might benefit from the per creation subscription better as well…like I said above, it’s an ongoing research project for me, and I’m keeping my options open.

For now, there is only one tier (the $5/month tier). In the future (if there is a future) I may add tiers and diversify my content. We’ll see. There’s much opportunity in erotic writing, youtube-ing and podcasting as has come to my attention over the last little while. Time will tell if I will embark on this, or other avenues with Patreon.

If you’re interested, click here or here to check out my Patreon page, or have any feedback or experience you’d like to share, please do so in the comments.