Interludes: Return to Schedule, Return to Form.

Hey everyone, I know it’s been spotty at best of late.

I apologize for promising content, and then not delivering.

I am not sorry that I missed the posts however.

I am going to be brutally honest with all of you:  I will never make progress with my career, or with my desire to work for myself, because of the blog posts on this site.

I won’t.  It’s that simple.  Blogging has been around for long enough that formula’s and best-practices have been established.

I will never go viral.  I will never get a huge groundswell of support.

It’s pretty simple why.  I refuse to do listicles.  I don’t want to tell you the top ten anything.  I want to share my story and my journey.  That’s going to involve me struggling.  A lot.

People don’t like to read struggle.  People don’t care that things you do are hard.  People want to hear vacuous positivity, regardless of whether or not it is grounded in reality.  They want to read about how all their dreams will come true, not the honest discussion of things you’ll need to do in order to even come close to achieving your goals.

That’s okay though.  I understand that about my blogging.  I understand that about how I’ve chosen to enter into the writing profession.  I am okay with taking the long way around.

That means, when it comes time for me to focus on other aspects of the Quill, I have to devote all of my time and attention to them.  I have promised a story podcast since I spoke the first words of the dream that would become the Quill.  I have met several friends precisely because of that desire, and once the Quill morphed from foggy potential to solid reality, I realized that I had failed to deliver on that dream.

Podcasts are a fantastic avenue to pursue for me, because of both my temperament and writing style.  The story podcast I sent off will be about 40 minutes long, which is perfect for such endeavors.  It was also just shy of seven thousand words long.  That’s about the length of prior serialized short stories that I have produced.  That’s also a little bit shorter than the short stories I will post for Patreon Supporters of the Quill.  All in all, it’s the length that is familiar to me, and as such it is easier for me to focus on projects of that length.

So when it came time to choose between my devotion to the ideals which birthed the Quill, I had to double down.  I had to forgo the blog posts that are more for my own writing practice than any sense that they will be the bedrock of my writing career.  I have no illusions that I will turn some magical corner and readers will rain down like manna from heaven.  It’s just not the niche I’ve chosen as my own.

So, when my back is against the wall, and I’ve got to choose between what I write during the hours I do not work, I am going to choose projects which have long-term potential.  I have signed a voice talent onto the Quill, and that talent will allow me to pursue more and more projects.  The more projects I can get going, the better that I can support both the voice talent in question as well as myself.

Blogging does not offer that potential.  Blogging does not allow me to expand.  Blogging, for the Quill, will always be my attempt to reach out to the people willing to spend their time here.  It is my acknowledgement that there are a thousand other things you could be doing, and are instead here with me.

It is my way of saying thank you.

Sincerely,

Justin