On the 12th September, 2018, I switched from posting daily to posting every Wednesday and Sunday. The experience has been exquisite so far, but it hasn’t entirely solved my problems.
First, twice-weekly still doesn’t leave me enough time to do deep thinking and research. It seems that, at the moment, one thousand words is the point of diminishing returns for me. Anything beyond that demands an exertion that I can’t make under current constraints. That means that many of the most interesting questions and possibilities that are raised whilst outlining and drafting posts are left unexplored. Sad face.
Second, blogging time still eats away at book-writing time. I’d like my second book to be finished and released this year. After that, I have at least four that I know I want to write—I know because, without any conscious effort on my part, my mind keeps returning to the projects and putting up preparatory scaffolding. But at this rate I’m not going to finish my current book for years. Sad face, again.
So I’m making another change. I’m going AFK, kinda. I’m not going to have a regular posting schedule for the foreseeable future. Instead, I’ll spend more time working on the novel, I’ll put more effort into exploring audacious ideas with greater rigour, and I’ll be more active on Twitter and Mastodon—treating the latter as an informal platform for conversation and abstract adventuring.
(Also of note: subscribers (who, in my unbiased opinion, are the best humans ever) will still get new posts (short or long, posted here or elsewhere) delivered straight to their inbox and will still be privy to infrequent book-project updates.)
This change is also a bet, a risk taken in service of a belief: that my comparative advantage lies in books not blogging. It is time to let that belief run the gauntlet of reality.
Swell & Cut 