Meta

I’m submitting work for publication elsewhere, and editors who are on the fence about my work come to this blog to see what other writing I put out there online. Every once in a while, I look at tracking information for this site and see one viewer look at several entries on this blog… and then two or three days later I’ll get a rejection from some literary magazine or other.

This makes me think about whether a weekly blog is a worthwhile activity or not. I admit that I’m not sure what the answer to that is. For the immediate future, I’m committed to doing this project. After a little consideration, I think I’ll keep going. I’ll simply have to make sure that I’m making as much sense as I think I am in the moment that I click “publish.”

Any reader who happens on these pages may look at what I just wrote in the above two paragraphs and think, “Are you going to take your own advice?” because I appear to be starting this post with a long digression that has little to do with the title of this entry. You’d be right to point that out, without question.

But this also seems like a good opportunity to talk about my process.

What process?

Exactly.

No one who looks at this blog could be surprised to learn that I am doing this by the seat of my pants. For good or ill, this is largely off-the-cuff, show-and-go writing. I start each blog post with “What am I going to write about this week?” and often end up revising things after I’ve published them. I did a lot of that this week, even going back several posts and sorting out sentences and sense from some of my recent posts: in effect, hitching up the pants the seat by which I steer after the fact.

I started this blog as a means of keeping myself accountable, and to prove to myself that I could consistently produce work I’m willing to let the public see. That willingness is a bar that varies in height, depending on self-esteem, on who I suspect may be looking at what I’m doing, and what kind of feedback I perceive myself to be getting. A standard that variable is difficult to meet.