Thank You

At the end of August in 2022 this Substack newsletter went live! Which means the supporters of my writing who right away shelled out the $50 for a year's subscription and have kept at it, just got yet another email prompt to pay again. And many of you have—both from that August beginning and throughout the months since.

In the grocery store aisle, searching out the BOGO offer of unsalted mixed nuts my wife likes, my phone dinged with the notice of another renewed subscription. When I got home I said to her, "I love earning money." I know this statement seems out of character for someone who never earned much. But I do love it. A $25 payment for an essay in an anthology makes my day. My neurochemicals get perky.

I'd worked most all my life which meant, in the nineties, when I became swamped by the pain, muscle loss, and fatigue of post-polio, I could qualify for SSDI (Social Security Disability Income). Which also meant that if I earned more than $750/month, I was kicked off and lost my health insurance. (Not that I could work at that point.)

When I was sixty-two, I signed a contract to publish my debut novel, The River's Memory. I had to add a stipulation that the $1000 advance was split into payments more than a month apart. And I contacted the SSDI offices (you could actually talk to someone back then) to ask what would happen if my novel brought in more than the allowed amount of money. She didn't laugh at me. Most likely she was also as delusional about the publishing world as I was. Anyway, she said there was a sort of "path to work" program that I could apply for if that should happen and then would have years to show results, but by then I'd be switched to regular Social Security.

And at sixty-five I was. And there were no more tight restrictions on work income. But, shocker, I was still disabled and unable to show up consistently in the ways needed for a job. I lived on a monthly fixed income that was extrapolated from a feminist bookstore job over twenty years before. So not much. But I had run that small business and knew how to figure out the true cost of everything and how to budget. I had fun. I wrote. And in her aging, my mother became generous and paid off my house and bought me a lift van. Still, I missed earning money, the equivalent of ringing up that cash register in the bookstore. Cha-Ching. (Not that they make that sound anymore.)

Then my mother died and I came into enough of an inheritance to have a fence built for the dog, get a digital camera, and have a bit of savings. And then I married Pam who did have a job. And then she retired. And now we both live on a fixed income. Which is enough. But fixed income means fixed which means if money is spent over there then it isn't spent here. It's a balancing act.

Which means when my email pings with notice of another Substack subscriber supporting my writing financially (Cha-Ching), I make that writing retreat reservation at a State Park cabin or pay for another month's membership at a work club near my house where I write on a novel-in-progress or take a zoom course on "Advanced Narrative Techniques" taught by ZZ Packer or perhaps consider applying for Clarion West's famed nine month novel writing workshop taught by Dr. Karen Lord. Or pass on support to other Substack writers.

So thank you. Thank you to the so very many of you who have supported my writing in so very many ways over all these years. You have made my writing better. You have brought me joy.

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