The Way Forward Is Sometimes The Way Back
My rejection from teaching at BYU-Idaho is a big deal to me, but mostly as another nail in the coffin of my academic career. Emotionally, I fight a lot of "nobody wants me" feelings, and the constant employment rejection is a concrete manifestation of that conviction. But as I wrote in my last post, I'm not here on earth solely for or at other people's pleasure.
I have a lot of student loans. My debt increases about $1,000 every two months since I achieved my PhD. I need and want to make money, but normal revenue streams are not available to me. I make what money I can at freelancing, babysitting, and odd jobs, but the time-to-income ratio is insufficient for long-term purposes. I have known for a long time that I should write novels for my mental health, so I'm going to put more effort into trying to sell them.
Last year I polished a short thriller titled This Prison. I contacted a few agents about it, even, and collected some rejection. I'm more hesitant to market that novel because it incorporates some pretty touchy subjects. Verity Burdick, the main character, is black and the story centers around her kidnapping. It includes a bit of jail. Other possibly questionable things. A few swears. I'd love to be able to hire a sensitivity reader, but you can't invest money you don't have. If any of you are interested in reading it, I can self-publish it on Amazon with my book of awkward poetry.
Honestly, the only publicity I could give it would be to warn people away - much like I do my poetry. It's very personal to me, so I protect it like a less-abled child.
Right now I'm re-polishing another manuscript (I have a bunch of them just lying around, tbh). Okay, it's more like a complete overhaul. I originally wanted to write something urban fantasy/suburban gothic but within just a few months I found that the original premise had been so overdone it has become a cliche, so I opted instead for something more chipper in an entirely different set of cliches.
As part of my renewed dedication to literally the only career open to me anymore, I added a WiP page to my Tumblr blog. The coding is complicated! The page itself is a work in progress (slow progress), but the idea is to keep anyone interested informed of what I'm actually doing, and to let people know where and when to buy my books.
I also opened an author page on Facebook that likes to suppress my posts because I won't pay them extra money. Like and follow if you're interested! I'm hoping to keep it updated with my progress, too, but I'm totally okay with dropping it if nobody sees it. I know Facebook wants to make money off of people who are making money off of them. That seems a little bit fair. But I don't make any money. You can totally @ me @DrNancyBatmanRoche ! That's my favorite part.
These resources aren't just meant to prove to y'all that I do more than vacuum, babysit, and knit. It's not good evidence anyway, since it's self-reported. I kind of just really want to learn how to do things this way. The way forward is curved, and I can't see where it'll end, but I can see one step ahead for now.
I have a lot of student loans. My debt increases about $1,000 every two months since I achieved my PhD. I need and want to make money, but normal revenue streams are not available to me. I make what money I can at freelancing, babysitting, and odd jobs, but the time-to-income ratio is insufficient for long-term purposes. I have known for a long time that I should write novels for my mental health, so I'm going to put more effort into trying to sell them.
Last year I polished a short thriller titled This Prison. I contacted a few agents about it, even, and collected some rejection. I'm more hesitant to market that novel because it incorporates some pretty touchy subjects. Verity Burdick, the main character, is black and the story centers around her kidnapping. It includes a bit of jail. Other possibly questionable things. A few swears. I'd love to be able to hire a sensitivity reader, but you can't invest money you don't have. If any of you are interested in reading it, I can self-publish it on Amazon with my book of awkward poetry.
Honestly, the only publicity I could give it would be to warn people away - much like I do my poetry. It's very personal to me, so I protect it like a less-abled child.
Right now I'm re-polishing another manuscript (I have a bunch of them just lying around, tbh). Okay, it's more like a complete overhaul. I originally wanted to write something urban fantasy/suburban gothic but within just a few months I found that the original premise had been so overdone it has become a cliche, so I opted instead for something more chipper in an entirely different set of cliches.
As part of my renewed dedication to literally the only career open to me anymore, I added a WiP page to my Tumblr blog. The coding is complicated! The page itself is a work in progress (slow progress), but the idea is to keep anyone interested informed of what I'm actually doing, and to let people know where and when to buy my books.
I also opened an author page on Facebook that likes to suppress my posts because I won't pay them extra money. Like and follow if you're interested! I'm hoping to keep it updated with my progress, too, but I'm totally okay with dropping it if nobody sees it. I know Facebook wants to make money off of people who are making money off of them. That seems a little bit fair. But I don't make any money. You can totally @ me @DrNancyBatmanRoche ! That's my favorite part.
These resources aren't just meant to prove to y'all that I do more than vacuum, babysit, and knit. It's not good evidence anyway, since it's self-reported. I kind of just really want to learn how to do things this way. The way forward is curved, and I can't see where it'll end, but I can see one step ahead for now.
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