I Have Triond Withdrawal Symptoms!

I have Triond Withdrawal Symptoms!

This week was a big step for me and my writing career. For two years I have written for Triond and networked my writing across at least six other content farms. Now maybe some of you don’t realise how devoted I was to this task? I wrote everyday regardless of pain and hospital appointments. I wrote regardless of days of the week Saturday and Sunday’s made now difference to me or Bank Holidays!

I even wrote when we had house guests and explained it was my job not a hobby! My guests were confused when they saw my earnings page however! Say $10 a month! I explained it was the practise of writing and being published that’s important. Some of my friends got why I wrote so staunchly and some didn’t! Triond has been part of my life.

Now this week in June I have to cut the apron strings. Why you may ask? Well there are many reasons but the main reason is I want to be published properly? I hear some of you shouting at this article and saying Triond is publishing properly! Well in all honesty search your heart and you will find its not. There are no editors that are human anyway! The quality of your work is never checked you can swear and use very explicate sex scenes in your writing. That in itself is attractive I admit it. I have experimented with sexuality and swearing in my short stories as much as the next writer.

The real reason I need to back right off from this very nice content farm is for selfish reasons I want to eventually be published in a paper book! I want an ISBN No! I want you to be able to walk into WH Smiths or Waterstones and buy my book! I have felt this way for six months or more and my partner who was also a prolific Triond writer kept asking me,

“So have you left Triond and started writing your fiction in a longer format and researched another publisher to approach?”

The answer I gave was no! I used to have a full time job with long hours but I still wrote at night and weekends and managed to approach publishers two or three times a year. I became frustrated with rejection and my partner suggested Triond! to me. I was hooked to see my writing on the internet it was such a thrill it really was and is. Plus then seeing a trickle of money grow into a few dollars was even better. I have a Pay Pal account and Triond sent the money as promised every month. I used this money to buy articles from E-Bay which prefers Pay Pal accounts as payment.

Then the big shake up happened around three months ago and my earnings are now around $3 a month which is just under £2! that’s awful, pitiful for all my efforts of at least 2-3 hours a day writing and networking my pieces. I can’t face a member of my family knowing I earn enough money only for a can of coke and a packet of crisps a month for over 520 published pieces of work on Triond!

That was it for me my efforts are going towards getting back to where I was three years ago which is writing short stories and approaching publishers. We buy “The Writers Handbook” every year which shows up to date publishing houses around the globe! Its expensive but a good reference tool for publishers. I will let you know of my progress this year onwards.

A strange thing has happened though? I miss writing for Triond every day! And its only this week I have stopped! Triond is extremely addictive and I mean it! You try to stop after writing at least one piece a day for two years! I miss reading my friends work it is an addiction just as much as alcohol or weed! I have to retrain my writing style also.

Short stories on Triond need to be around 500 to 2000 words and I found 2000 words put people off reading them on the net, so for me at least 500 to 1200 word format worked and I could tell by the comments I received if the reader actually read all of the story. This shortened format improved my writing style for Flash Fiction and telling a story through dialogue only. However the down side is I now need to write longer short stories imagine how many stories you would need to fill a compilation of short stories for a book? If their only 700 words long?

I have to work on slow characterisation every syllable and sentence does not need to be action packed and dynamic I have more time to build the story and the characters. I am used to this process of flash fiction now because I have been Triondized!  I keep hitting the ‘Tools’ button on my laptop and seeing how many words I’ve used why? The short story will be finished when its finished! Its not a competition entry with a maximum of 2000 words I’ve entered a few of them believe me!

I feel cut off from the outside world as Triond has become a circle of friends for me as well as an outlet for my need to write. Shutting down my laptop without pressing the submit button is a weird feeling after two years! Its only my first week of no Triond so I guess like any recovering addict the symptoms will fade away? I intend to write an article such as this one or a factual article that grabs me to keep my account open and keep up with my friends writing.

If you are like me I suggest writing for competitions or sending longer works to publishers along side Triond if you become addicted such as me you are letting opportunities of being published in the real world slip you by. You may have found this article critical and ungrateful of me? Far from it I would still recommend Triond to other people as a hobby. I also feel that Triond must in some way appreciate my work over the last two years with over 520 published pieces for them.

By the way this article is 1056 words long plus these!

Lord Banks