Are you wondering: How can I support The Cookie Crumbles Writing About Writing and its struggling, yet devilishly cute and cuddly author? If I add up all the time spent being marvelously entertained, all the laughter, all the tears, and all the inspiration–as well as having my life and understanding of writing enriched–it would be longer than a directors cut of the Lord of The Rings trilogy.…for which I paid $39.99 (even during a sale) at Costco. How can I give back for all this joy?

Short answer: Pay the artist!

Long answer:
Well, there’s the obvi­ous. Flow­ers. Choco­lates. Promis­es you don’t intend to keep.… 

I often get this ques­tion with caveat of “in ways that don’t involve spend­ing any mon­ey,” so let me assure you that I do have an answer to this below. How­ev­er, I can’t stress enough how help­ful mon­ey is. (2022 edit—and with med­ical bills for surgery all the can­cer stuff approach­ing five fig­ures even WITH insur­ance, I could absolute­ly use a hand.) So let me put this list in rough­ly the order of how useful/helpful/supportive each method is.

1- Sign up for an ongo­ing, month­ly finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion (even just ONE dol­lar) through Patre­on.
Sim­ply put, noth­ing will con­tribute more to the ongo­ing sur­vival of Writ­ing About Writ­ing, sup­port the site more, or ensure future offer­ings of fic­tion and time­ly arti­cles than will a few dol­lars that I can reli­ably count on month after month and use to bud­get. Also, noth­ing fuels an artists’ or enter­tain­ers’ sense of duty more than feel­ing like they have a patron’s gen­eros­i­ty to live up to. (There are days my patrons were the only rea­son I wrote a word.) Whether it is scal­ing back hours at my oth­er job or being able to give this blog full-time ener­gy, none of it will hap­pen if I need to make ends meet from oth­er rev­enue streams. I know not every­one has a bud­get for fling­ing mon­ey at online con­tent cre­ators, espe­cial­ly in today’s econ­o­my, and I don’t want this to come across like I’m besmirch­ing the very meth­ods of assis­tance that I men­tion below, but “Sup­port your local artist,” isn’t just a slo­gan about pats on the back and encour­ag­ing emails. If you want any artist or enter­tain­er to be able to go on cre­at­ing and giv­ing you the con­tent you like, the very best way to do that is to make sure their rent stays paid and their elec­tric­i­ty stays on, so that they aren’t out sell­ing Blue­tooth smart bidets on com­mis­sion when they could be mak­ing more of what you enjoy.

The eas­i­est way to get me a reg­u­lar finan­cial con­tri­bu­tion is through my Patre­on. As lit­tle as a dol­lar a month helps me and will get you in on backchan­nel chats and polls. There are more rewards for high­er com­mit­ments, but some real­ly good rewards even at the low­er tiers. I love my large donors, of course, but if one of them expe­ri­ences a life hic­cup, I could be down 5% of my income; so a hearty “ecosys­tem” of one, three, five, and maaaaaybe ten dol­lar donors is also beloved and incred­i­bly valu­able in the long run.

2- Make a one-time dona­tion through Pay­pal.
Not every­one can give a set amount month after month, but yeet­ing mon­ey at the artist will still absolute­ly be the most sup­port­ive thing a sup­port­ing sup­port­er can do to sup­port. I hate to sound like a mate­ri­al­ist, but writ­ing is so much eas­i­er to do when the pow­er isn’t turned off.

A one time dona­tion is easy through Pay­pal. Just look over to the left side for the con­spic­u­ous­ly placed tip jar. I also have Ven­mo. 

Rar­er, but not unheard of, are folks who want to set up an ongo­ing dona­tion, but have no inter­est in Patre­on or the reward tier sys­tem (for what­ev­er rea­son); you can just click a box that says “Make this an ongo­ing dona­tion.”

I’m about to start a fundrais­er for my med­ical expens­es. (If you’re catch­ing up, I was diag­nosed with can­cer in Novem­ber, had surgery in Decem­ber, and am cur­rent­ly in ongo­ing treat­ment.) Right now bills are push­ing into the “mid-four-fig­ures” range, but I haven’t paid for the hos­pi­tal stay or the surgery yet, to say noth­ing of the ongo­ing ther­a­peu­tics and tests that have gone into this year (so my out of pock­et max is reset), and I’m start­ing to real­ize that on top of lost income, hous­ing care­givers, and dri­ving expens­es, it’s going to cap out pret­ty close to ten thou­sand. I’d like to do this inde­pen­dent­ly of start­ing a sep­a­rate Gofundme, but we’ll see how it does. So far I’ve made about 20% of that in dona­tions.

4‑Subscribe!
Suc­cess begets suc­cess. Big num­bers attract atten­tion and draw even more audi­ence. More audi­ence will widen the net for folks who might be able to afford to give a dol­lar or two. You can help me even if you don’t have mon­ey to give your­self. If folks think their care­ful­ly writ­ten guest blog is going to reach 18 peo­ple, their atti­tude about con­tribut­ing will be a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than if they think it’s going to reach 10,000.

Find all the ways to stalk me, and pick a few of your faves.

5- Share the arti­cles you like on social media.
The hard­est part about blog­ging is get­ting the word out. If I share a post on social media, it’s all my same friends see­ing it again and again. They all secret­ly (and some not so secret­ly) want me to shut up. Not every­one likes my style. Not every­one cares about writ­ing. Not every­one can main­tain their com­po­sure when it’s time to use their scroll wheel. Find­ing my niche and those folks who real­ly appre­ci­ate the work I am doing is tougher than run­ning down a cephalopoid on foot (#23yearoldpopculturereferenceFTW), so help­ing push that process along is incred­i­bly help­ful. You have friends I’ve nev­er met. Some of them might love what I do. It is an absolute­ly free and easy way to real­ly help W.A.W. —sim­ply share the arti­cles you real­ly like on var­i­ous social media in order to help me to find the nar­row niche of peo­ple who like both what I’m say­ing and how I’m say­ing it.

They’re out there…but I could use your help to find them.

7- Click the lit­tle but­tons. A lot.
In today’s world of web con­tent design­ers and search engine com­pe­ti­tion, there is a “Red Queen Race” between con­tent providers try­ing to fig­ure out how to trick a search engine into list­ing them high­er and search engines try­ing to make sure that what is high on a search isn’t filler crap. Google is con­stant­ly com­ing up with new tricks to make sure some­one who’s just drop­ping key­words into a fluff piece does­n’t end up as the first result of a search. One of the most effec­tive ways to help an arti­cle get more traf­fic (by being a high­er result on a search engine) is to do things like give it “Likes,” “+1s” and “Thumbs Up.” I’m not say­ing you have to click some­thing you don’t like, but if you want to help W.A.W., you might be just a lit­tle more gen­er­ous with those endorse­ment but­tons than for a nor­mal site.

9- Com­ment or drop me a line.
It’s a thank­less job. I make bare­ly enough to get by (if I give up my car, cell phone, and eat­ing any­thing that isn’t a PB&J or ramen) for fifty hours or so of work a week. There have been a deplorable lack of hawt groupie three­somes since ever. Most of the time, no one makes a com­ment unless they’ve got a prob­lem with some­thing I’ve writ­ten. And half the time, I get these anony­mous nast-o-grams that are absolute­ly intend­ed to make my cry like the Daw­son’s Creek meme. It’s real­ly nice to hear some of the good stuff from time to time whether it’s just an arti­cle you par­tic­u­lar­ly liked, or a gen­er­al appre­ci­a­tion of my work.

It real­ly does make a dif­fer­ence when I’m try­ing to get out of bed to write the next day.