Why I’m Offering Paid Subscriptions
I’ve never been great at asking for things.
Ask me to tell a story about the night Ken detached his prosthetic leg mid-conversation, no problem. Ask me to stand up in a theater full of people and get through the soirée we planned together for his memorial without falling apart, I can do that too—barely, but I did it. But ask me to say "hey, would you pay me for this?" and suddenly I'm twenty-five again, working two jobs and still not sure I deserve either paycheck.
So this is me, working up the nerve.
Starting this week, The Ronaissance will have a paid tier. Not every post will be paid, but the ones I spend more time on. There’s going to be more, for the people who want to go deeper with me, and I want to tell you honestly why, instead of just sliding a button into the blog and hoping nobody asks.
Here’s the truth: I spent years writing for other people for paychecks. Corporate comms, other people’s voices, other people’s priorities—dressed up as mine. It paid the bills. It also quietly starved the part of me that first fell in love with a blue Pilot ballpoint pen and a stenography pad at 13. When I finally stepped away from that world to write full-time, I didn’t step into a salary. I stepped into the deep end.
Writing “The Luck We Carry” wasn’t a hobby I did on the side. It was—still is—the thing I built a life around after I lost the person I built my first life around. Turning that into an actual career, one that supports me the way corporate comms used to, means the writing itself has to be able to hold some weight. Not just emotionally. Financially, too.
That’s not a complaint. It’s just math, and I’d rather be honest about it than pretend a writing career runs on vibes.
But here’s the part I actually care about more: a paid tier isn’t just about keeping the lights on. It’s about what I can give you when the meter’s not always running toward “free and skimmable.” Some stories need room to breathe that a free weekly post doesn’t have. Deeper craft breakdowns on how I actually turn a memory into an essay. Real talk about the audiobook process, the querying process, the “yes, self-publishing is genuinely hard and here’s what nobody tells you” process. First access to a new projeect as it comes together. And more, as I figure it out.
Moving with grief, not moving on, was never supposed to be a marketing line. It’s the whole philosophy—that we don’t leave what shaped us behind, we build forward with it. I feel the same way about this blog. I’m not leaving the free version behind. I’m building something alongside it, for the people who want to walk a little further into the process with me.
If that’s you, I’d be honored. If it’s not, you’re not going anywhere, and neither is the free stuff.
Ken used to say right now is all we’re guaranteed. He said yes to things that terrified him constantly—a one-man show, a hemipelvectomy, a tattoo in the weeks before I died—because waiting for the fear to go away was never really an option.
So: yes. This is my version of tugging my ear at the dartboard, hoping someone I trust is watching, ready to help me pull this off.
Thanks for being here—free, paid, or just lurking with your coffee. Truly. It’s what I love doing.
Ron Stempkowski is the author of The Luck We Carry: Love, Loss, and the Stories That Shape Us, a memoir-in-essays about learning to move with grief instead of moving on. If this story resonated, you can grab a signed copy—complete with a handwritten note—at ronstempkowski.com, or get your copy wherever books are sold. And if you'd like more stories like this one, join the journey and get them straight in your inbox.
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