I think I may have found the solution to my problem about how to make money at this writing gig. No, it doesn’t involve learning to actually write. Yet.

It came to me while working on the micro-farm the other day. In researching the whole “livestock” side of the endeavor I started getting the feeling that, in addition to providing an unexpected bounty to the local band of coyotes, raising animals would involve two of my least favorite four-letter words: work and odor.

For some reason, the books I read and the farmers I spoke with never addressed either of these issues directly. But when I read between the lines of statements like: “Goat and sheep accommodations should be placed as far from your house as possible, and preferably downwind” or “Well, they are nimble but you might can catch them if you go out while it’s still dark”, I got the impression that things might not be as they seem. I mean “still dark” implies that it’s been previously dark which would really mean “in the wee hours of the morning.”

I don’t think so.

After much discussion with my friend regarding the direction of the farmsteading activities we decided that it would be prudent to defer the animals to some future, unspecified, date and to concentrate on things that wouldn’t require as much of a commitment. Like plants. So, from the second story window, we surveyed the meadow to come up with some ideas.

“Wouldn’t it be beautiful if it were covered in flowers,” she said.

“Yeah, then the bees would have something to eat.”

“And the butterflies. And hummingbirds.”

“Yeah, and if we planted native wildflowers,” I said enthusiastically, “there wouldn’t be any work.”

Who did I think I was kidding?

In any event, I went online and found a company that sold bulk quantities of Pacific Northwest wildflower seed specifically chosen to appeal to the airborne nectar suckers. Just below the picture showing a cloud of butterflies hovering above field simply paved in color was a link: “Click here for more information”. I did.

“The key to a successful planting,” the story went, “is in the preparation of a rich, hearty, loam soil. A good foundation for the future health of your wildflowers.” Excuse me, but doesn’t “wild” imply the absence of human intervention? I mean “the key to a healthy band of wild coyotes” isn’t scattering bowls filled with Purina throughout the wilderness. No, wild coyotes are best served by maintaining a healthy population of wild deer. And healthy wild deer, as we’ve seen in earlier posts, simply require that we plant gardens and orchards and then they will do the rest.

Nevertheless I read on. “First all existing grasses and weeds must be removed and any remaining seeds killed.” As I looked out of the window at the roughly thirty-thousand square feet of grass and weeds I would need to remove, all hopes I held for “low maintenance” by planting native species were dashed against the jagged rocks of reality. All because the supposedly “wild” flowers required a good foundation.

Then the light came on. Hey, I thought. If otherwise intelligent gardeners can be duped into buying wildflower seeds, which actually require more effort to grow than bananas in Canada; maybe I can use the whole concept of a good “Foundation” to start driving dollars into my writing coffers.

To be honest, the whole idea of “read for free and pay me a dollar if you like it” isn’t really working out. Despite having a convenient link that is even more conveniently pre-loaded with one dollar just over to the left there, most of you have pointedly ignored it. Admittedly, there were a few of you who jumped right on the bandwagon, but those few; well, I know their secrets so they may have had an ulterior motive. (Not to fear those secrets remain safe. But for the life of me – and you know who you are – I still can’t figure out the whole carpet-tape, olive oil, and oysters thing.) I digress. I figured that the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds – I could go on – of others that are regular readers and haven’t coughed up as much as a dime, might require more than just gentle humor and a catchy turn of phrase.

They require guilt.

To that end I am announcing the creation of the Save the Writers Foundation. While most of you immediately noticed the plural in the name, full disclosure requires me to inform you that during the startup phase the Foundation will be about the salvation of just one writer: me. This might seem a bit cynical but there’s only one of me and, in addition to being the beneficiary, I’m going to have to do all the work plus keep writing. So, first things first.

I anticipate that eventually there will be a website and mass mailings and all the other things that charities spend your money on in order to get you to give more money. But for now I’ll just stick with the “send in a dollar” model and see if I can use that as a starting point for collecting donations. Eventually I hope to get to the point where I can leave those mundane details to the legions of accountants whom I’ll need.

To serve as a model for the future I turned to the granddaddy of all such foundations: Save the Children. Originally founded in England in 1919 to help young survivors in Vienna, Austria, Save the Children has grown to a worldwide association of thirty independent organizations dedicated to improving the lives of children. In the United States the branch was founded in 1932 to provide hot lunches to school kids in Depression ravaged Appalachia. A noble goal indeed. In the intervening eighty-some years the organization’s focus has shifted to the point that, in 2010, ninety-four percent of the charity’s dollars were sent outside the United States, to areas served by the twenty-nine other Save the Children charities. In fact, the total expenditures for programs in the United States are less than the amount Save the Children spends just on fundraising and lobbying efforts; a lobbying campaign resulting in the contribution of nearly one-hundred sixty million dollars from the United States government. Per year.

All of this money, some four-hundred fifty million dollars a year from the U.S. alone, is to keep kids around the world healthy and happy until they are summarily cut off in their teens and left to fend for themselves in the globalized market driven economy; or die of some horrid tropical disease because there isn’t a Save the Adults Foundation; or sign up with a terrorist group.

Could Save the Writers pick a more appropriate model? Forget the worthy goals and virtuous aspirations. Look at all that money.

So I spent some time wandering through the SaveTheChildren.org website. I analyzed the marketing techniques and ancillary strategies of their five-hundred million dollar-a-year cash grab and distilled it all down to a few key elements.

First – it’s about food. Hunger, or Nutrition for the positive spin, is a big part of the pitch. Images of happy, healthy, and well-fed kids writing on blackboards, standing next to clean water supplies, or patronizing shiny-white relief workers abound. For STW I’m thinking about something along the lines of “Your one-dollar contribution can help a starving writer by giving him or her two full cartons of ramen noodles and a glass of rum. Every day.” Put that caption next to a black and white image of a comatose writer lying on a floor strewn with crumpled pages next to a desk upon which sits an aged Underwood typewriter and the pitch is complete. It would call up vivid memories of the potential donor’s college days – allowing them to associate with the writer – while at the same time confirming their preconceived notion that all writers are booze-swilling reprobates looking to make a buck without actually doing any work.

Second – it’s about connection. The STC illusion is, that for every child you sponsor, you’ll enter into a life-long friendship. You’ll learn their hopes and dreams, you’ll get birthday cards coming from them each and every year, or until you stop paying or they “graduate” the program. If it goes on after this you can bet that somebody is dreaming about a Green Card. Save the Writers would offer a similar program where, in recognition of your support, your pet writer will mention you by name in the acknowledgement section of their new novel. Something like: And lastly to Cassandra; your support and love made this book possible. Or maybe STW could offer an upgrade so you could get a whole book dedicated to you. Imagine the thrill of seeing the dedication page: For Cassandra – you forgot your oysters.

Lastly, and this will be the toughest for me to pull off – it’s about the Third World. All of the kids shown are dressed in ethnic garb, living in ethnic dwellings, playing with ethnic pets – like goats and sheep, and doing ethnic things – like milking the buffalo or carrying drinking water in open buckets. Nobody is shown participating in any kind of reality-based activity. You don’t see them playing soccer barefoot in a mine-strewn field littered with shattered bottles. You don’t see them standing around industrial textile machinery with a patch over an eye. While most of the Seattle area has road maintenance that people in the Third World would be ashamed of, there just isn’t any real ethnic vibe here. On top of that, I’ve already ruled out livestock for the micro-farm and taking water from the tap and putting into a bucket so I can pour it into ice-chilled glasses just doesn’t make any sense. So much for the ethnic thing, but two-out-of-three isn’t bad.

Something that Save the Children has in abundance are Artist Ambassadors. These are actors and pop-stars most notable for not having immediately recognizable names or accomplishments. I think Save the Writers could run with that idea and get rich, but not particularly talented, writers to fill a similar function as spokespeople/fundraising shills. Lee Child comes to mind.

All in all, the more I think about it the better I think the whole Save the Writers idea is. In fact, I think that it’s a concept on par with the idea of Save the Children’s World Pneumonia Day. An idea about which Artist Ambassador Hugh Laurie, who I guess is somewhat famous for playing a drug addict on TV or something, says: 

“It’s so big, you couldn’t make a TV show about it. But we can and must change it.”

A statement which, despite meaning absolutely nothing, I think we can all get behind.

So click on the “Support” button, and Save the Writers. Come on, it’s only a dollar.