Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Changes In The Blog

If you're expecting a Miss Leech cartoon, I'm sorry to say that she's going on holiday until September.  I've figured some things out, and I realize that it is necessary to make some changes right now.

I'm Changing The Blog. 

I have no idea if I'm going to do this for a month, or through the end of summer, or for the whole year.  It probably won't be beyond that, though.  Call it a sideways hiatus:

From now until ... sometime, this blog will be a fiction blog.  I will post three things:
  • Stories: mainly the Monday/Thursday episodes of serial novels.
  • Announcements: sales, new books, stories in magazines, breaks between serial stories, major life events (such as when I'll start regular blogging again)... stuff like that.
  • Story Notes: about stories posted here, or possibly on books in progress.

That's it.  The announcements and story notes will not be on a schedule -- they'll just appear when I have something to say.  The fiction will continue on Mondays and Thursdays.  I have drafts of many wonderful posts for you. They are going into a drawer until they get the perspective they need. I will undoubtedly add more drafts to the pile.


Why Am I Doing This?

Focus.

I finally have the chance to focus.  Before I retired, I didn't have a Chance In Hell of achieving the focus I aimed for.  Since my retirement was, uh, a surprise for me, I had to take time to get past a lot of life-related distractions.  Now for the past few months I've been cutting down on the number of things I do, bringing myself down to the focus point.

I'm not there yet, so I'm going to keep cutting down until I get where I want to be with writing. 

Life changes are like global warming, or the demolition of a dam: they start slowly, almost imperceptably, but when they go, they go fast and certain.

I will keep you up to date now and then in the "announcements" posts, but until then:

Be brave.  Be fair.  Do good work.

See you in the funny papers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Focus is a good thing. I've had to do that myself. Good luck!

The Daring Novelist said...

Thanks, Ryan!