Double Your Income, Pay Off Your Debt On ODSP/OW. Louis Shalako

Louis Shalako

Over the last three years, I have almost doubled my income. Without being facetious, I can honestly say I’m getting up near the poverty line. This is by taking a part-time gig and working it, semi-scientifically, as a business. After so many years on ODSP, this is a remarkable achievement, as the basic provincial disability pension runs about thirty-five to forty percent below the poverty line.

In the last year, I have reduced my credit card debt down to approximately zero. Last year, at about this time, I exceeded my $1500.00 credit limit by a couple of dollars. Basically, you check the balance online…see that yesterday’s purchase at the liquor store hasn’t gone through yet…nip down there and grab another pile of booze while you still can. The same goes for smokes and gas as well—

Groceries, even, if you’re not getting too many hours at work. And let’s be honest, that happens sometimes.

There is a $25.00 penalty for that, so that I owed, at that time, about $1,527.00. Now, even on that debt, at 28 % APR, the monthly interest doesn’t seem too bad. At the time of the monthly statement, it’s twenty-five, thirty bucks, forty dollars at most. What’s forty dollars times twelve? Multiply that by twelve months and it seems a bit more significant.

That’s a half a thousand bucks, real money when you’re lining up at food banks and wearing God-damned rags all the time.

Now, in order to avoid ‘overpayments’, due to the fact that on ODSP, one can only earn up to $200.00 per month without penalty, I have reinvested ‘excess profits’ back into my business. 

This is money you cannot live on, presumably, this is why the ODSP accepts it.

This involves the purchase of anything from new keyboards, a new monitor, or a reconditioned computer. So, each and every month, I was jamming some new purchase (hopefully a reasonable one in the sense of developing a business), onto the credit card.

At the end of the month, I paid as much as I could scrape up. Even so, somehow, I must have been chipping away at that balance. Two days before the end of the month, (March), I owe $148.00 on the credit card balance. The other factor is the fact that I did not buy anything for the office, for the business, during the months of January, February and March. On ODSP, the guidelines state that all expenses are to be charged to the month in which the purchase was made—it’s not a year-end sort of deduction, such as any other business in Canada might enjoy. A regular human business person could buy a case of toilet paper for the business, and the revenue people really don’t care in which month the purchase was made.

I actually went a bit over the allowable limit for those three months, a calculated gamble.

I have a reason for taking that risk—

So, in the course of about one year, I will have taken my credit card balance down to zero. I will be paying that last bit off Friday morning, a little after dawn, in other words.

What an interesting feeling it surely is—

To have actual control over one’s finances. To have mastered something. Maybe that’s what it is.

Okay, the monthly interest on $148.00 is not much, a couple or three bucks. It’s not going to make a big difference in my life, however, once the balance is down to zero, I can make a major purchase. I want a drafting table for the business. The base might cost $184.00 and the top, a separate item, $132.00. I can make that purchase over two months, use it as an allowable business deduction, and avoid ‘overpayments’ or charges against my Ontario Disability Support Program benefits. Which, after all, is still the major source of my income. 

If I pay off one hundred percent of the charge at the end of any given month, then there is no interest due at all. This is the ideal, and what every first-time credit-card holder brags about, after all.

So, as things presently stand, clients may earn up to $200.00 per month, after allowable deductions. The new provincial government has announced that in future, clients will be able to earn up to $6,000.00 per year, i.e. $500.00 per month. For Ontario Works, clients will be able to earn up to $300.00 (OW means welfare), the rate of claw-back after that will be seventy-five percent. Presumably the same goes for ODSP. I just haven’t seen that in writing. 

I haven’t been able to find anything as to when that takes effect.

In terms of business planning, it’s still up in the air.

Assuming November 1, just as an example, then the first ten months of the year represents $2,000.00 in allowable income, and the last two months of the year another $1,000.00 of allowable income. This seems like a fair way to deal with a transition year, going from one set of guidelines to another as it were.

I could earn up to three grand, and never have to keep a receipt, mileage log or anything.

Thank you for reading.

Louis has all kinds of books and stories on Amazon.

END

Publishing a Novel Manuscript as a Serial...What?

"I'm writing the first draft of my new novel manuscript as a serial, see?"

Louis Shalako

If writing a serial is challenging, then writing one and publishing it piece by piece before it is complete is more than challenging.

It’s fraught with peril, in fact downright dangerous.

There is always the possibility of failure, of missing a deadline, or just running out of ideas.

Since I have a rough idea of how the thing ends, I don’t worry too much about that.

Now, to write a novel—and publish it, bit by bit, in serial fashion, as I go along, is more than just dangerous. 

It’s just plain mad, going by established, traditional value systems.

And I know that very well.

However, as noted (somewhere) in a previous blog post, it slowed me down. I took a month and did a quality-control audit of my entire operation. I needed that time. I didn’t waste it, I merely did other important things.

If a writer can’t produce two to three and a half or four thousand words, once a week, what are you doing calling yourself a writer?

Where the real danger lies, is in the fact that this is the first draft of my thirteenth novel. And I’m publishing it as a serial…bit by bit, as I go along.

Then, when the serial is done, I get to take the first draft of a manuscript for a full-length novel and then go through it as many times as necessary, in order to bring it up to standard as a stand-alone novel.

Some readers are probably dying to point out that the traditional publishing world would not be interested in such a manuscript submission. The well has been poisoned, etc.

That’s fine. They have their concerns.

But years ago, I predicted, in a conversation with my mother, that…listen closely, “In the future, people will be able to look over my shoulder and watch as I write a novel.”

And people like authors. They like them to be good guys—accessible, and interesting, and stuff like that…they be like all interested.

It’s a pretty simple concept. I’m already writing clean copy, in the bare-bones, skeletal form, with illustrations, and no, it is not a comic book or illustrated novel. It’s a serial, illustrated with free, minimal images that help to carry the text and the story and do substitute in some ways for the threadbare nature of it.

The completed novel won’t have any illustrations. I experimented with pictures in Love, Money, Sex and Death in the 21^st Century, and it’s okay up to a point, with flowing text and running on a multitude of reading devices. I’m not really ready to attempt anything like that yet with a serious work of literary art. That one is non-fiction, a series of essays, and I wanted to make that particular experiment at that particular time…not now.

If I was to do that with Betty Blue, I probably wouldn’t even want those particular images anyway—I’d want much better ones.

"Hey, I got an idea. Why don't I disguise myself as a door?"

And yet the people can still watch me work. They can see how it’s done, (or at least how I do it) and they can come back and have a look from time to time, and/or; if they are so inclined, they can just wait and read the full novel at a later date.

It’s a much more convenient form, for the sort of lying in bed reading we all enjoy; the ebook or the printed trade paperback or pocketbook. It will be a richer, more rewarding reading experience. 

That’s not to say the serial doesn’t have a place in modern writing, because at this point we just don’t know. Yet you could read an episode coming home on the commuter train, or on a bus, or on your lunch hour.

As a writer, doing a serial, it’s interesting. I’ve never written a serial before, and in fact I never thought I would. I never, ever dreamed of writing a serial, not until now. But when I dreamed of it, now—I just went ahead and did it.

That’s the real revolution here, ladies and gentlemen.

As a kid, I used to stay up late and watch everything from Charlie Chan to the Lone Ranger and the Bowery Boys, there was all kinds of weird stuff on late at night. Lately I’ve been checking out the Three Stooges on Youtube, as they tend to run about 18+ minutes. It’s an interesting length.

I don’t even have a TV now, but it’s interesting to experiment with cliff-hangers, mood, setting, pacing and character development. The fact that someone is going to see this week’s work this week has its own peculiar demands, not the least of which is that it has to be good.

As authors we can learn something from shows we loved when we were little kids. As a kid, I loved The Rat Patrol. As an adult in his mid-fifties, I can safely say it was pretty bad TV, even by the standards of the day. 

But at the time, fantasies of raiding patrols in the desert were pretty standard fare and ruled my daydreams. 

Such is childhood.

Childish daydreams, brought to fine focus and actualized by modern technology.

We’re looking at about twenty episodes for Betty Blue, at which point we shall wind it up. As a manuscript, with section nine done, it’s over twenty-five thousand words, and a novel is a minimum of 60,000. 

I don’t want to come up too short, and there’s not much point in going to 130,000 words. This takes some intuitive sense of the material to be covered, the amount of time and space left ahead of the writer, and basically how long it takes to run a certain kind of scene in terms of word-count. If it came in at 55,000 words, seemed complete and I had no other ideas, then I guess we would label it a ‘novelette’ and price it accordingly…’nuff said.

My style may be more ‘cinematic’ than some other writers, (whatever that means) although I do tend to think in terms of ‘what is the next scene?’ I usually do that when I’m done the last one!

That stems from watching a lot of old films and old TV, rather than any formal training in creative writing or screenwriting.

The storytelling is much more simplistic in the Three Stooges for example. It’s a hell of a lot easier to be objective, if you’re not all that interested in it. The structure, the stereotypes, the archetypes if you will, are all more readily apparent.

You couldn’t get away with that in modern, serious television—unless it’s good. By that I mean Married with Children good, or The Trailer Park Boys kind of good. That’s a half an hour per episode. It doesn’t have to reflect reality. It merely has to be entertaining—it has to be interesting.

It’s an entirely different discipline, one where I don’t have the luxury of time.

The thing is to get it right the first time.

Speaking of cliff-hangers, that’s it until Friday evening at eight p.m. when you can read Part 9 of The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue, right here at Shalako Publishing.

This link takes you to Part 8, where you will also find links to the preceding episodes.

Until then—ciao, Baby.

END

One Million Words of Crap.

Georgie, Porgie, puddin' pie. Kiss da girls and make 'em cry.

This is totally off the record.

This is the part that hasn’t been mentioned yet. It’s about the one million words of crap.

They say all writers have to do it. And yet the world has changed. It has changed in a completely Orwellian fashion—at least in the minds of some.

That’s because old patterns of power and dominance are threatened and consequently less assured of profit-taking. In Orwell’s novel the farmer goes away and the dogs and the pigs take over, until they are thrown out of power by revolutionary forces symbolized by the alliance of all the other cute and cuddly little animals in the farmyard.

Once you’ve written your million words of crap, you get to do something very special thanks to the Brave New World of digital publishing, which includes self-published works, as well as that whole other world, of professional websites and magazines, many or most of which now take digital submissions.

You get to edit one million words of crap. You get to spell and grammar check one million words of crap. 

You get to submit a million words of crap. You get to savour and enjoy the feeling of having a million words of crap rejected right back in your face. You get to re-submit one million words of crap and keep moving forwards until you complete your one million words of crap.

Trust me, ladies and gentlemen, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been there and I’ve done that.

The only difference between the old and the new is that I made my million words of crap count.

What they’re also not telling you is this: it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Writing a million words of crap is just plain, good-old fashioned fun. Don’t let anyone discourage you. And don’t let them guys hog all the fun.

Shoulder someone aside, as many as you have to, and get in there and have some fun.

***

Yes, you get to proofread, over and over again, one million words of crap. You get to pare, and polish, and revise, one million words of crap. You get to figure out where all the chapters and scene breaks go in one million words of crap. You get to figure out chapter titles, create names and planets and people and towns that never existed and never will exist.

You get the power to create one million words of crap. That power grows in the practice, and you will need that for later, when you’re not writing so much crap anymore, so you must promise never to abuse that power, the power to write one million words of crap…

You get to write the stories, invent the characters, describe the settings and the actions which all go into the process of writing a million words of crap.

You get to decide what literary style, one million words of crap will be presented in. You get to decide in which type-face your million words of crap will be set, and you get to decide whether to go with U.S., U.K., or Canadian English to render your one million words of crap readable.

You will discover readers to actually read your one million words of crap. This may surprise you, but it’s true.

Writing one million words of crap will teach you a lot.

You get to format one million words of crap. You get to stick front and rear matter in one million words of crap. You get to write blurbs for one million words of crap, and talk about one million words of crap on Facebook and Twitter, and, oh, yeah, now you’re starting to get the idea.

It really is groovy, Baby.

You get to assign ISBN numbers and design marketing images for one million words of crap.

You get to publish one million words of crap, earn some small royalties on one million words of crap, and get good and bad reviews on your one million words of crap.

You get to write blog posts about how wonderful it is, having written one million words of crap.

You can feel proud of writing one million words of crap because writing one million words of crap is a rare achievement. Not everyone gets to write one million words of crap; for life is uncertain and some are just unlucky when it comes to the opportunity of writing one million words of crap.

You even get to take a little flak for that one million words of crap.

You get to decide if it’s worth doing, to get through that one million words of crap, so you can forget it, and get over it, and move on, to your next few million words worth of crap.

There are those who feel that writing one million words of crap is an important milestone in any writer’s career.

If this writer was the sort of guy to make suggestions, (which he isn’t) I might suggest a patch or a badge or a medal or something.

(Just a thought for the future, guys. – ed.)

The people who say it are mostly correct, as far as I know.

(It’s not like he actually cares, ladies and gentlemen. – ed.)         

You have to write a million words of crap. That’s how things are done around here.

(I’m sure, somewhere out there on the internet(s) one million words of crap have or will soon be written on this somewhat arcane subject: the subject of one million words of crap. – ed.)

Their perspective is different. They grew up under a whole different ethos of publishing.

I think I got more out of my million words of crap than maybe some other people, because I did it all myself. 

I didn’t get any real help with it. No one held my hand with this little thing, where we all have to write a million words of crap.

That’s what they said, right?

We all have to write a million words of crap.

(Except for that one individual; who won their first contest while they were still an unborn fetus, tapping it out in Morse on the wall of the abdomen so their mother, a pro stenographer, replete  with pen and paper, could jot it down and submit it by Pony Express.)

Anyhow, I figure I earned my million words of crap.

I have earned the right to write one million words of crap.

(Ooh, a sense of entitlement. – ed.)

I did it the hard way. I worked at it. I put some effort into it, maybe even a little enthusiasm.

But I don’t want to harp on that.

I’m just going to sit here and bask in all the reflected glory from my one million words of crap.

The real point of this essay is very simple.

Your one million words of crap goes a lot farther now than it did just a few short years ago.

That is the real revolution here.

The Difference Between Fiction and Journalism

In journalism, you never have dialogue. You quote people, not always exactly. You put their words into the proper English and the style appropriate for your outlet.

You cut out a lot of stuff in the interest of brevity.

You don’t describe people. You might have a picture.

You don’t characterize people in the same sense that a fiction writer would.

Journalism is morally neutral, completely objective when it’s at its best.

“Lizzie Borden was convicted of homicide in the axe-killing of her mother in provincial court today…”

They never say she did it. They say she was charged with it, or convicted of it. One draws a conclusion and the other is merely reporting a fact.

The journalist doesn’t judge. He (or she. – ed.) merely reports, in as factual a manner as he (or she. – ed.) can.

The fiction writer is nothing if not a f***ing moralist.

Every scene, every action, every line of dialogue will go some way to showing character, which I think is a consequence of our actions.

Character may be defined as the result of a person’s lifetime of actions, experiences, perceptions, education, influences, and environment. Character bears on our moral choices.

I just made that up.

I even added something in later.

It’s not fiction and it’s not journalism. What it is in an opinion, and one very quickly formulated to boot.

More than anything, it’s incomplete.

It really doesn’t go far enough in tackling a difficult and fairly large subject, i.e., the subject of character.

***

Thanks for sticking around ladies and gentlemen, and in conclusion, I would say that writing a million words of crap is a character-building experience.

It certainly has been in my case.

END

Comments are always welcome on this blog.