When I tell friends I write fiction, they ask why I haven’t published any of it. Well, when I started, I spent about a year working myself up to the point where I even thought I had anything good enough to publish (Two years further in, I cringe when I look back and read some of that stuff, much as I hope to cringe five years from now when I look at what I’m writing these days).

But none of my fiction is published, and trying to change that has been a time-and-soul-sucking exercise in frustration. Most magazines and journals that publish “literary fiction” (which is to say anything not special interest or genre-specific), will sit on your submission for six to nine months before rendering a decision. Most will not tell you when they’ve rendered their decision. And many even charge “reading fees” to a maintain database where you can click through every day to see whether your manuscript is still being considered (marked “pending“) or not (marked “complete“, because we authors are such a fragile bunch, and “rejected” is such an unpleasant word).

Sigh.

Some of my submissions are still “pending” after a year and a half

It was about a year ago that I realized I was spending more time trying to find appropriate journals, contacting them, submitting, tracking submissions and dealing with utter lacks of response than I was actually writing. Now, I like writing, and all of those finding/submitting/tracking/dealing things are not writing. They were not making me a better writer, and they were not, empirically, helping me share my writing with people who seemed to enjoy reading it.

I figure the more I write, the better I get, and the happier everyone is. So… I’ve decided to ditch the whole traditional publication model and focus on writing. Instead of worrying about publishing, I’m going to just put things up online. Like that. My goal is to crank out at least one new story per month, and you’ll be able to find them all on my page at WritersCafe Medium.com.

But there’s more. Have you heard about Patreon? I love Patreon, because it lets me directly support the artists I follow online. For my favorite webcomics like The Meek, Questionable Content and Octopus Pie, I pledge a buck or two per month to help support Der-Shing, Jeph, Meredith, and others who make their stuff available for free on the web. They publish, and Patreon aggregates my buck or two with all their other patrons and helps them pay the bills.

So… here’s the deal: as I said, you can go find my fiction online for free over at WritersCafe Medium.com. But if you want to pat me on the back, encourage me to write more and – as a bonus – be notified when I post new content, please bop over to my shiny new Patreon page and become a patron.

Since I have no pretense of supporting myself this way, I’m asking for the minimum Patreon allows: a $1 per story pledge. While I’m clearing out my backlog I will probably post more than one story per month, but they’ll be posted as freebies, so feeling like one of cool kids and giving me that “Go, Pablo, Go!” encouragement shouldn’t cost you more than one buck per month.

So, how ’bout it?
-> https://www.patreon.com/cohn <-