“You know why I write? Because paper can’t tell me to SHUT UP.” – K. A.
In an effort to start promoting my writing a bit more (I have been lazy with it lately, mostly because I have no idea what I’m doing), I recently joined Twitter and started following a bunch of random names as they appeared in my thread (until I realized you can actually search for topics that interest you). One of the people I followed this way is a writer by the name of Ksenia Anske (she’s Russian, lives in Seattle). Her tweets got me hooked right away, and I started paying more attention to what she has to say overall. Then I visited her full profile and laughed out loud while reading her other and older posts. Then I ended up on her blog, and WOW, talk about mind blown! The way she uses the English language puts me to shame. I’ve always thought I was good at writing, but this girl is unbelievable and I would urge ANYONE with a little bit of brain function to go to her blog and REALLY READ it (www.kseniaanske.com). She’s inspiring to me, and her words got me excited about writing again. She’s insightful, witty, unexpectedly honest, and funny… all in one… You can just read her passion, it emanates from every word and envelops you so insidiously that you don’t realize it until you stop reading and ponder. Wow. Where have I been until now? Damn, my writing is bad. Oh my, so much more to learn. Maybe I should just quit, I’ll never be this good. Why am I crying? This is too much. I have to write a story now.
Anyways, Ms. Ksenia is giving away her writing for free, although people who want to support her can also buy her books on Amazon, for example, or donate to keep her writing. I’m including this link to the specific article about it (http://www.kseniaanske.com/blog/2014/5/24/what-happens-to-book-sales-if-your-books-are-free), and I’m including a short fragment here, because I couldn’t say it any better (and I just like the way she puts it):
“This is the lesson I learned, through all this fear and trepidation. Like I said in the previous blog post, I still finance myself via savings and occasional consulting gigs, but I will keep giving my art away for free, because it’s what I believe in. I believe in sharing love, and my art is my manifestation of love. I love you, and I want you to have what I can give. If you want to give back, please do. If not, I’m happy because I gave. Nothing else matters, really. I don’t know when I’ll be dead. Just reading the news today, the news of another horrendous shooting, made my hair stand on end, and filled me with sadness. What kind of a world do we live in, when one is so deprived of love, one descends to killing those who denied it? I cry as I write this. You never know when that stray bullet might catch you. We will all be dead, one way or another. Why wait? Why sit on the wealth of your love when you could be so much happier sharing it? What is money anyway? Pieces of paper that exchange pockets, a concept. This is it.”
I’m calling this The Ksenia Anske Model, which I will be following myself (don’t worry, she already knows I stole it and gave her approval: “Steal it! STEAL IT!!”). I cannot find words to express how much sense this makes to me, so I will stop now and go write another story… well, no, lots of things to fix on this blog first:) Pdf.’s to add, explanations of what this means for those reading my stuff, updates, links, etc. etc.