money and publishing
I'm caught between two directions as far as creative work and I'm not really sure what to do about it.
On one hand, I've really burnt out on friends banging the drum of "giving me money for this tiny thing I made is radical praxis" and passing around the same five dollars in a creative work community; on the other hand I like, really do need to get paid for something right now, and I think the kind of work I do is worth it, writing-wise. I've put a lot of my games work up for pay-what-you-want and what people "want" to pay is, on average, nothing. (Sometimes a particularly generous person drops me 50, but that's rare.)
The other struggle is that it's very difficult to get feedback. If, for example, I wanted to publish in poetry, most of the journals I'd want to submit to in order to get my name out there a) pay basically nothing and b) require you to not have published work anywhere else, first. In the literary world there's basically a requirement that you functionally work for exposure until you "make it," and you manage to pitch a chapbook or collection to a publisher. And these days even traditional publishing is kind of a crapshoot for making money.
I just don't want to become That One Person Who's Always Pushing Her Thing And Trying To Sell To Friends, you know. No one likes that, or at least I didn't, really, when I had people in my orbit who were really on that grind. I don't know that it's netted them any success, either, so... what's worth my effort, when I'm so tired all the time? How much should I try and bend my work toward making me money versus making me happy? How much marketing do I need to do, and in what ways?
Will I ever have the answers? No idea.