help!!!
Hi, I’m wadapan! I’m contacting you from inside my computer with an urgent message!!!
Every week for as long as I can, I want to share a new piece of writing with you.
Right now, I’m under-employed, working minimum-wage part-time, buying myself time to write by burning through savings and selling junk I have lying around the house. These supplemental sources of income sadly won’t last the year.
My day job pays just enough to cover my rent (which is cheap for my area), but not bills or food, let alone one-off expenses. I’ve ballparked the figure I need to live without worrying at £345 a month. If you have cash to burn and like what I do, you can set up a monthly donation here on Substack, or (preferably) over on Patreon.
Wait, wait, don’t go away just yet!
If you can’t donate, there are still a ton of ways you can help me out.
Free and legal ways to help me
Right now, the main thing you can do, if you like a piece, is share it with someone you know who doesn’t already know about my work. I love every comment I get on Discord and the like, it’s just that those comments are completely invisible to the rest of the world, and for years I’ve struggled to get my work past my immediate social circle. I’d love for people to be talking about it in places where I’m not!
Other ways to help, uh, “the algorithm”, I assume, would be:
Sign up for a free subscription to the newsletter, even if you don’t check your email
Leave a comment on the post itself. “Thanks for the chapter!” is fine, obviously a longer comment is better, “I hate your chapter, it sucks!” is acceptable too.
“Like” and “restack” and whatever the mechanism on this website is for that sort of thing? I refuse to look into it.
Even if this newsletter crashes and burns completely, having more eyes on my work would make a huge difference to what I can achieve going forward.
Periodicals & Contests
I’m interested in writing for periodicals and competitions. Better writers than me have tried and failed, so this is something I haven’t been able to justify devoting much time to. However, if you know of any magazines, journals, blogs, or contests, which accept original short stories or essays for cash, preferably even if they’ve already been shared on a personal blog like this one… then please send a link my way! (Obviously don’t submit anything on my behalf.)
I’d prefer to avoid anything with an upfront submission fee, as I feel especially stupid if I’ve paid to have some loser dump my short story directly into the bin.
Commissions
I’m opening commissions, at least I think so, anyway. If you have an idea for a short story, fic, or essay, and want to see it “made real”… then pitch me on it, ballpark a price, and see if I bite! This is a great way to support me and actually get something for your money, as right now I can’t offer any sort of incentive for paid subscribers. Just look at my existing posts to get a sense of what I can do for you.
The closer your idea is to something I can just stick on this blog wholesale when it’s done, the more likely I am to do it, so keep that in mind!
Open to work
I’m looking for work in a creative industry, especially the games industry. I very nearly managed to get my foot in the door as a Narrative Designer a couple of years ago, got horribly messed around, and have since switched my focus to building up a portfolio. If you or anyone you know is looking for a writer on a project… then please think of me! I will drop my newsletter readers like *that* to actually work as a writer full-time. They’re nothing to me, honest. What you and I have is real.
Collaborations
I’d love to make comics, but I’m not an artist. In the past, I’ve slaved over pages to make drawings that I’m ultimately not that happy with, and it’s no longer something I feel I can invest time into. Sadly, neither am I in a position to commission artwork. However, if you are a sequential artist looking for practise, maybe we can help each other out! I would love to send a script your way. Apart from adapting any of my existing stories for the comic medium, here are some ideas for comics that I have already:
Star Wars: Marooned, a standalone fancomic about a wannabe Jedi with no Force sensitivity, who’s been raised on an uncharted planet by a family of castaway Clone Troopers.
War On Cars, an original comic about a lollipop lady given a sacred mission to protect a group of schoolkids during “car-mageddon”, an apocalyptic event where every single car turns homicidal.
Typhon, a continuation/reboot/deconstruction of the public-domain comic of the same name, about a nautical hero who visits strange Atlantis-like worlds.
If you have a basic idea of your own, feel free to pitch me on it, and I should be able to turn it into a full script if I like it. Just get in touch.