In case you aren’t aware I abhor “Generative AI”. I won’t get into a big, long rant here, but the short version is that when I first encountered it in the form of Midjourney I thought it was a super fun toy. But once I came to understand how these algorithms are trained and their environmental and psychological impacts my opinion changed. Now I hate them and I feel like any use of the current models is tantamount to endorsing theft.
So.
When I opened up to submissions for Fascination the guidelines included a long section about ‘Do not use LLMs like ChatGPT for anything submitted to me. Not to generated text, not to develop ideas. Not at all. Period.’
Many people thanked me for taking that stance but one person said something to the effect of, ‘That is a really privileged position to take because not everyone has access to critique groups or can afford a freelance editors to improve our writing and so we use LLMs for that’.
Now, while I would argue that LLMs are not a good way to learn how to improve your writing, she was right when she said freelance editors can be expensive and that cost can create a barrier to access for the very people who would benefit from them the most.
I thought about that a lot.
And I also thought about how much I enjoyed meeting with writers as a part of my tenure as the Edmonton Public Library’s Writer in Residence this year.
And I decided to do something new in 2026.
Two things, actually.
First, I created a new tier on my Patreon — the Unicorns tier.
That tier costs $45 Canadian a month and it gives members access to:
- All the archives of Patreon content that I have released over the years
- At least one new short story or poem a month that I write exclusively for Patreon
- An additional poem a month written exclusively for the higher levels of membership on my Patreon
- Monthly ‘What’s on my desk?’ update giving behind the scenes sneak peeks and updates on what I’m working on
- An electronic copy of all books I release
- A character in a book, story or poem named after you
- An invitation to a group ‘morning tea’ Zoom chat once a month
- And, unique to this tier:
- The ability to book a 45 minute one on one video chat with me each month. We can talk about whatever they’d like (writing or publishing adjacent). As a part of this they can optionally provide up to 3,000 words of their writing that I will edit and provide verbal feedback on.
Last year I was charging $50 USD to edit a short story, so this is a discount even on that without even taking all the other perks into account. I think it’s a fantastic deal for anyone who might want that sort of feedback.
Patreon also makes it easy to adjust your membership levels, so it would be simple for someone to be a patron at the least expensive (Fae) level and then, when they have a short story they want feedback on, move up to the Unicorns level for a month to get that edit and meeting, and the next month shift back down to the less expensive (or even free) level.
I am currently only going to make three spots available at this tier, partly to test out the demand and also partly to make sure I don’t allow it to become my full time job.
You can check out all the various levels of support on my Patreon here:
https://www.patreon.com/c/rhondaparrish/membership
Those levels include the Unicorn tier I am talking about above, as well as several other options that range up to be more expensive but also all the way down to Free.
It’s that last level–the free level–I want to talk about a little bit now 🙂
Because that Unicorns Patreon tier? It’s clearly not free. And the image at the top of this post says free edits, right?
And that is right, because the second thing I am going to do is give away edits.
I am going to set aside one day a month to edit people’s work for free.
The way it will work is that I will let subscribers to my newsletter and members of my Patreon (even free members) know what the date is a week in advance and provide instructions for how to email me work (up to a maximum of 3,000 words) to edit.
Then on Free Edits Day I will start editing what was sent to me when my workday begins and keep working through the end of the day getting as many edits done as I can.
Work will be edited based on a first come first served basis*.
Depending on the demand I may be able to get through everything sent to me, or I may not.
If I don’t manage to edit everything sent to me, I will email the authors whose work I missed to let them know I am sorry but I didn’t reach theirs in time and invite them to try again in the next month — I am not going to hold work over from month to month.
So it’s a little bit like a lottery, I guess, but one where the odds will largely depend on demand, which is not something I can control.
Those are the two new editing-related things I’m going to do in 2026.
I will try them out for the year and see how they go and then figure out what to do in 2027.
If someone wants to be guaranteed an edit their best bet is the Unicorns tier on the Patreon, but if they want a free edit the Free Edit Day (which I really need to come up with a better name for) will be the way to go.
Any suggestions for a cooler name than ‘Free Edit Day’? Let me know! 🙂
*If demand ends up being quite high, I may actually shuffle these and make it random. But I’m going to try fcfs to start
