I whacked, weeded, tweaked and generally did backend tech stuff at odd hours of the weekend evenings. The weather was nice enough to warrant a long hike. Unfortunately, that hike included picking up a credit card statement – the sales numbers for November.
It’s a plaintive wail, “Regrets, I’ve had a few….” (Oh yeah, name that tune).
It’s that manic phase, and until my January arrives, until the sun finally moves out of Sagittarius, for me, it’s just not a great time.
I was trying to explain, it’s like having a firecracker stand. Big sales, once a year. July 4th. Or, here in Texas? Twice a year, for sure. We can break our small arms for New Year’s Eve, too, judging from the highways and byways.
During my meditative hike, one of the ideas that crossed my mind was that it’s a good time to put a few items on the back burner. I’ve been writing the horoscopes, as Fishing Guide to the Stars, for a decade. Or, at least, I’ve got a decade’s worth of material on hand at this time. Been in a half dozen publications. But writing for publication and writing for the web are different animals.
With introduction, weekly quote, calculations, and copyright notice, the weekly scopes run a shade under 3K words. A year ago, at this time, I was wrestling with moving to just a weekly format. Did it. Moved the publication date to Thursday. Did it. Wrestled with posting the weekly scopes – for free – in email, once a week. Did it. (And modified it, which, unless January is really slow, I won’t get around to dropping the suggested donation and making it a paid subscription.)
Now the consistent complaint from publishers is that the material is too long. Too focused. Too Texan. Too (something). “Thanks, we’ll be in touch….”
I had two or three requests for a monthly column for publications – back to that theme – for free. “We can’t pay you, but we’d love to have your stuff, as long as you write about (include their topic).”
Unless it involves large sums of money, it’s hard to do anything else, though.
Thanks. I’ll be in touch.
