A new direction: over and out (for a while)
On May 2, 2011, with this post, I began everyday blogging around here (well, Monday through Friday, anyway). For nearly five months, with the exception of a legitimate week's vacation, I made sure something new was up every morning at 8. On Fridays, I even posted off-the-cuff short stories, inspired by words suggested by my friends.
I did this … why? To be sure, no one was clamoring for it. I did it because new authors — and I'm certainly one — endure this barrage of advice about building a platform, self-promoting, cutting through the muck and the mud of the publishing world and making a name. Daily blogging is one of the pillars of the author platform, or so we're told. So I blogged. Even when I had little to say. Even when I needed the ample muscles of a friend.
And then, last week, I stopped. I did one last short story, big turd that it is, and that was that.
I'm done. Which isn't to say I'll never be around, never have something to say. In particular, the opportunity to bang the drum for other books and other writers is appealing to me — because of how interesting those folks are and because my daily wankery is not on display. Expect to see much more of those things and much less of the other, lesser stuff. This note aside, I'm tired of listening to myself, tired of reading my own facile words in this forum. It's time to step back, shut up, and get busy doing what I'm here to do, which is to write stories. Social media, for all its wonder, has its hooks in the wrong parts of me, and the tweets and Facebook posts and blog posts and other nonsense have come to take up far too much of my time. I have a full-time job and a going-blind father and a sideline publishing business and a wife who'd like to see me once in a while, and I have books to write, too. There's not room for everything, every day, and mine is not the sort of personality that can easily impose moderation, so we're going to give this austerity thing a whirl.
Interestingly enough, I'm going be on a panel discussion about the role of literature blogs during the Montana Festival of the Book later this week. I promise, this screed aside, I'll have something cogent to say.
