National Today is a website which introduces the reader to the myriad declared days that grace the national and international calendars. Some of these holidays seem directly related to food industries (National Pickle Day is November 13) while others put into the forefront of people’s minds for a good cause (National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, April 23-29). But today I’m here to write about International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day and how to celebrate it.

The day started with a Howard V. Hendrix, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, who called people who published their work for free on the Internet as ‘pixel-stained technopeasants’ and stated that no writer should do so. Jo Walton, another writer and member of the SFWA, encouraged writers to do exactly what Hendrix disdained. And a holiday was born. (National Today, 2023)

I don’t know the details, but this sounds like a more modern debate between self-publishers (which I am) and those traditionally published. The debate seems to be whether self-published works are legit because they don’t have an industry gate-keeping the publication process. But those who have been mistreated by the traditional process look at the issue differently.

Turns out I’m a pixel-stained technopeasant and I didn’t even know it. I even write in the fantasy genre, so I am one of those pixel-stained techopeasants of which Hendrix spoke, although not an original technopeasant. I have published in online contests and journals which, although they had a gatekeeper, did not pay. Most Internet journals, in my experience, do not pay, just as most print journals do not.

How, according to National Today (2023) does one celebrate this day?

• Read a blog
• Publish for free online
• Post a social media post

Here’s the free creative work:

Limerance

There’s a push to ask you for your name,

And a pull ‘cause I have no right to know,

As I stand in the corner of the venue

With nothing in my mind except the color of your eyes.

There’s a push to sift through every word

And a pull to flee from disappointment

Still I remember and I polish all your words

And call myself the author of their shine.

There’s a push from the devil on my shoulder,

And a pull from my shreds of dignity

And I’m standing on one foot while juggling cats

And I don’t want what I want,

I don’t want what I want.