First things first. I have a GoFundMe going that was partially organized by a comrade of mine and a comrade of theirs. She wanted to connect me to resources so that I could stop dealing with poverty long enough to finish my book, which will be brilliant and better than anything I’ve ever written here. The fund is basically me trying to survive for the next year, to pay for services, to have peace of mind. And to finish the gahdamn book!
It took a lot for me to put that number on there y’all. Because me and my family live off less than $25k USD per year. And that’s up from back when we had just the one kid. But the people helping me, the people pushing me, reminded me of my worth. They reminded me that what I’m doing has value, and that I have been working on this book through poverty, harassment and defamation, abuse, grief, illness, hotel homelessness, and more. So even though I was ready to go for the bare minimum (again), I swallowed my fear and put the big number. So if you see the GFM goal and start marveling at my audacity, remember that I was terrified to put that as my goal.
I took all of July to work on the draft. The last week of the month I took a Hurston-Wright Writer’s Week Workshop I was chosen for, taught by Nisi Shawl. It was great y’all. I was able to make some progress on a speculative fiction work I’ve been messing with off and on, and most importantly, I was able to connect with other writers. And now I attend Nisi Shawl’s writing group on an almost daily basis. So that’s great. If you don’t know who Nisi Shawl is, look them up. They’re amazing.
In lieu of posting here I continued doing Callin’ (an app) audioblogs on a weekly basis. There’s one tomorrow at 2pm ET. I usually do them around 1 or 2pm on Sunday so that my UK friend can come. I talk about the same things there that I do on Twitter, but it’s more entertaining (imo) and you can hear my voice. The last episode we did was about the Black Twitter “therapy for black men” discourse. IYKYK.
struggle love podcast (On Callin')
Anyway. I am still working on the draft. It is going… okay. I am moving as fast as I can to at least get a decent draft to one of my comrades—who is extremely, and suddenly, ill—but, amazingly, has connected me to some money and a laptop and is literally just amazing. Especially considering what’s going in their life right now. So expect me to be spotty here for the time being, but also expect an article or podcast episode about O’Shea Sibley. Because that’s gonna happen.