Down, But Not Out.

Good lord, I had such hopes for this blog when I moved everything here.

I wanted to what Tor has managed to do, and what others like myself are beginning to attempt: To create a website which posts content like unto a publisher in its own right.

I wanted the Quill to have stories, to have artwork, to model podcasts, to be a hub for Youtube content.

I wanted so very many things from this little darling.  And in the end, I couldn’t deliver.

I have yet to make Youtube content.  I haven’t managed to get anyone to help with the creation of a webcomic, let alone draw the thing.  I have not, as of yet, created a forest of podcasts that one could become lost in for hours.  Right now I have as many trees as the Twin Pines Mall in Back to the Future.  Minus one tree.

My stories go nowhere, bring in no readers, and engage no potential audience.  Once more, much as I was at the old location, I am simply talking to an empty room, bowing, and leaving with no-one having been the wiser for all my efforts.

I am very much a ‘carrot on the stick’ person, as my dad once famously told me.  I need to see the progress in order for me to justify the input.  I can think long term, but I require short term gains in order to stay engaged with any specific plan.  Otherwise, I tend to drift.  I try new things, go different directions, and eventually get myself so lost and tangled along the way that I cannot even remember why I was there in the first place.

It’s like I get up to change the light bulb in the kitchen, then I come to my senses while trying to buy cigarettes three states over.  I don’t even smoke, so why I’m even arguing so hard to have them is a mystery.

It’s not because I lack will, or am unwilling to put in the effort.  Look at the vault of posts here.  I have almost 300 of them.  300.  They amass almost 400 thousand written words, and I’ve managed to create and maintain almost 40 unique worlds and stories within those pages.

That’s not nothing.  I’ve got two manuscripts to my name, and I’m now working my way into a release of my first story later in the year.  I am going places, and yet a few weeks back I had to look at the time I invested in this website, creating content over and over for literally no one to read, and I admit I despaired.

I threw up my hands and swore it all off as a bad job.

That feels like quitting though.  Smart decision or not, correct use of time or not, my mother did not raise a quitter.  I did not get what I have, did not climb as high as I have and earn the respect of so many intelligent men and women by quitting on things, nor did I do it by quitting on myself.

I am who I am, where I am, and what I am by re-evaluating my plans when things go wrong, by re-orienting myself onto new and achievable goals, and then re-committing myself to growth.

It’s not perfect.  As time goes by, I realize more and more that I’m not destined for greatness in the literary field.  It doesn’t mean my efforts are wasted, it doesn’t make my work in vain.  But it does mean I need to readjust my goals, my dreams, and my desires to more reasonable destinations.

It’s nothing I haven’t done before.

Indelibly,

The Unsheathed Quill