Category: blogging about my blog

A Post You Can Scroll On By If You’re Scrolling Down My Blog’s Timeline

This is me figuring some things out.

This is one of those meta posts. Yes, I’m taking up space here to do some “out-loud” thinking about what I want to do here. Sorry! Bear with me (if you’re out there at all) and I promise next week will be better.

That’s where I want to start I guess. I’m trying to be more consistent about this thing. I mean to start posting dependably every Tuesday. This will be my fourth Tuesday in a row, so it seems like this may actually happen. It’s also true that early in this blog’s history, I did a couple of “seasons” – three-month periods where I consistently posted every Tuesday. Unsurprisingly, I had more views then and even had a couple of posts that drew a small amount of attention.

I was never very deliberate about what I posted in those days. My intent was simply to keep writing. I had just come out of an MFA program with a “Creative Nonfiction” degree and was trying to work towards… something. I know not what, at this point, but someting. In the years since, I have managed to keep writing, but not always here on this blog. You can look at my “About Diane” page and see a few things that have appeared in other publications.

But most of what I’ve done is not published, except for what’s on this checkered and not-very-directed blog, and a metric tonne of social media posting. I have a novel in the works, a novella, and I’ve just decided to self-publish a chapbook of mixed essays and fiction sometime this coming year. It has become time to devote a bit more energy to this thing and see what I can actually accomplish.

That’s the backstory. So what’s next? I think an important next step for me is to build some sort of constituency. I haven’t tried very hard to do that, but I do know it to be possible. It’s time to make some stuff happen. The question is: how?

I think this blog needs to stand on its own. I need to post consistently. I’m doing that much and will continue to. This is my first line of “offense”, if you will, and my sincere hope is to post things that will be of interest. Scrolling back through my previous posts of late, I see that I have developed a pattern: I review albums and try to contextualize my thoughts around whatever music I’m posting about with thoughts from my life and from the world as I see it. I also do much the same thing without the music; see my “Zeitgeist” posts.

What that indicates to me is that I orient towards cultural commentary. You may be surprised to find that I am still looking for indications. I chalk that up to a lack of conscious planning about what I mean to say when I come here to put down some thoughts. You could say that this is more of an observation than a deliberate choice, but I’m fine with the diagnosis.

Essentially, this is what they used to call a “perblog” or Personal Blog. For me, this will almost always be pointed outward at the world, but it will definitely come from a point of view somewhere between these two slightly-ringing ears and a little bit behind these two hazel eyes. A broadcast from my personal brain radio, if you will.

I hope you will tune in from time to time. I’ll try to make it interesting. Please like, subscribe, and if you’re feeling generous, leave a comment!

Posting On My Blog About Posting On My Blog About Me

I perceive that my writing energy, what of it there is, is being spent on correspondence. I wish this was not so, or that I was devoting more time to writing than I am. This is most apparent on Facebook, and to a lesser degree, on Twitter.

I think my twitter is super boring. I hate that I’ve let it become about leftist politics and the Democratic Primary horse race, which is already such a sh*t show that I can’t believe it. I really don’t like centrist Democrats. They’re so full of it.

The thing that’s annoying me the most is the seemingly successful smear job they’re doing on Tulsi Gabbard. Let’s get this straight: The candidate who is basing her campaign on the need to stop doing foreign regime change wars is, somehow, an imperialist. Also, someone with a 100% score from the HRC is a secret homophobe.

Got it.

And so it gets harder and harder to look at social media, because most of my friends are het up about politics, because politics is such a sh*t show right now, and because I’m also het up about politics, and sometimes I just don’t have the heart for it. I don’t even have the will to finish an argument when I start one. This stuff is BORING.

I’m sick of idiots, and I’m sick of the led-around-by-the-nose centrists who are bound to go fight for Biden Man (as I call him) when Biden Man is the latest example of the sort of Democratic pol who is, at heart, more responsible for Trompe (as I call him) than any other faction in the country, including his own base.

But I digress, egregiously.

I’m depressed, and therefore more distractible than usual, and the human race is draining me of hope right now. There are a couple of factors here. One is that I am feeling a bit rudderless about my writing, and less than productive. It’s hard to remember that I’ve done a couple of things since graduating, and that I can, if I choose to, keep the momentum going. I’m making that choice.

The other is that I am lonely and feeling spiritually dark. I’ve been embracing my inner goth. Winter is really hard for me, and it takes until around this time of year to get over it. So I think I have a one or two month window in which to be as productive as possible, then I have to start splitting time with the film fest I program for.

I have to start being very strategic with my time. I am picking projects I really want to do, and putting as much love into them as I can. That’s the way I know of to keep myself going. I need to be excited about what I’m working on. That’s why the write-every-day experiment that I tried earlier this spring failed so badly — I had to force myself to the computer every day, and that sort of thing just will not work with me. It’s a problem, but it’s the truth.

Mid-Season Hiatus

Hi, all.

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ll be taking a brief amount of time away from the blog while I sort out what happens next.

Thank you to everyone who has looked at this blog over the course of 2018, and who continues to be interested. You have sustained me, and you continue to.

There is definitely more to come!

Your correspondent,
Diane

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.