To cut to the heart of it, this is my writing blog, and fortunately or unfortunately, it is at the bottom of my priority list. It’s a little bit like the old witticism: “The last thing I want to do is hurt you…. but it is on my list.”
And so it is with writing about writing. For many reasons it is a not unimportant activity which can never convince people that it is so not unimportant as to be important. What could be more important than writing about writing? For one thing, actually writing, as in the practice of actually sitting down and producing stories, poems, novels, and articles. For another, the least favorite yet still so vital practice of quasi-writing, which I define as the production of cover letters, submission strategies, market research, submitting work for publication, and so forth. You can write and never attempt to publish, but if you do that you’re denying yourself a lot of pain, disappointment, bother, tedium, et cetera.
For another, drawing and painting, two great pleasures in my current routine which increasingly crowd out both writing and quasi-writing. For another, all the mundane obligations like leaky faucets and creaky joints and squeaky wheels and unpaid bills and other demands on one’s time which we curse as they beset us, but which would surely miss if we ever successfully wished them all away. Hell, I’ve paid my guitar and my sheet music more attention this past year than I have this blog, and I’ve formally quit music forever, not just once, but many times (don’t worry guitar, I’ve formally quit sugar and adult beverages too and we see how that’s working out).
So quitting doesn’t always mean quitting forever. For example, about 10 years ago I quit Twitter, and I even quit most of the other social media I was on. Then recently, I overheard people whose opinions I value (if not trust) squawking about how Twitter was a Hellscape, a literal, actual Hellscape, and I thought, “Hellscape? I’m in.”
Seriously, the publishing landscape is changing, and although we’re reluctant to admit it, we have to live with it. As of right now, a writer who refuses to self-publicize with the available tools is self-handicapping. An “online presence,” besides being a meager substitute for actual human connection, is a way to aid in selling writing, and it gives me a chance to engage in one of my favorite activities: telling the World at Large exactly why I’m Right About Everything, and Why The World is Wrong.
Thus I make this blog post, and promise, in the coming year 2023, to do better. Or if not better, to at least do more often.
