Made It in The End

Once again, as the saying goes, I must in some way have been enjoying myself, despite the agonies of arthritic pain that same days is intense, because once again the month is flying by, and this is my 50th post, yet another minor milestone along the writing road. I actually also had a day this month when I earned 2cents short of $3 in one day, which is another barrier I have still to break, though getting even close to it felt pretty good.

There are many days when I ponder the good sense, or lack of it, in sticking around at triond, when my writing is obviously good enough to earn me a lot more elsewhere, but the fellowship offered up by this site truly is unique among writing sites, and in many ways compensates for the poor financial rewards, though these are gradually getting to be more worthwhile as the site cleans up its act.

The improvement in content quality in the past month has been quite incredible, to be perfectly honest, and while, like many others I had my doubts at first about the whistle-blowing aspect of the new flag button, I did take to using it for highlighting really poor or inappropriate posts, as did many others, obviously, and the results have been quite astonishing, in that content is now so much better than it was.

There have to be certain knock-on consequences to such improvement, in terms of site ranking, which I am quite certain must be creeping upwards, because earnings are definitely starting to show improvement, though there is still some way to go, I suspect.  Nonetheless, the faltering steps being taken, in the right direction, are a very positive sign, and that is helping to persuade me that sticking with triond, while also exploring other possibilities, really does make good sense.

This was, I am led to believe by some contributors who have longer triond histories than myself, once a much more highly thought of site and will be so again, I am certain, now that the problems are being tackled, though no amount of improvement in the pay scale here can compare to the rates some publishers offer to writers, as much, in the most lucrative places, as one dollar for every single word. Not easy markets to break into, but well worth the effort if you can.

I am fairly lucky, in some respects, because I do not have money as a main motivator, even though I do get a buzz from being paid for what I simply love to do, which is to write. Nothing could, in my eyes, be more thrilling than to see positive comments rolling in about your latest post, meaning that it is being not only read but enjoyed by others, satisfying that inner demon who drives the writing process, and is eternally hungry for recognition.

There will not be a hundred posts this month, because I am too busy getting stuck back into my main passion, the writing of short fiction, for my upcoming e-book of short stories. It may not sell thousands of copies, but the sense of achievement I will get from simply getting my first ever book out there will make that unimportant. I know, though, that my fiction writing is good enough to win competitions, so with enough self=promotion, I could do reasonably well with it.

What I ideally want is for this book to be the first step on the road to more published books, fulfilling an ambition I have harbored since I first began writing for enjoyment 50 or more years ago. The path with triond has been very interesting so far, and even if my contributions on the site do slow down because of other writing commitments, I will be sticking around for the foreseeable future. The site is on the way back upwards, and I want to be part of that success.