I had a surprisingly good year on the blogging front. Not only did I exceed my goal of tripling the visits to my blog, but my blogging lead to other interesting gigs, including a column at SF Signal, and two story sales to 40K Books. I’m not sure it would be realistic to think that I could triple my visits again in 2012. So my focus this year is less on increasing my readership and more on providing interesting and entertaining content to the readers I already have.
1. Post at least 24 new Episodes of my Vacation in the Golden Age
In 2011, I posted 29 Episodes. So why only 24 in 2012? Well, when I started my Vacation, I was doing one issue a week. That turned out to be too much for me to handle so I switched to a biweekly scheduled which amounts to 26 Episodes/year. However, life has a way of interfering sometimes, witness my recent bout with an ear infection that prevented me from getting much done for a few weeks. So I’m aiming for 24 Episodes to allow myself a couple of places to take a break if I feel I need them (e.g., I’m sick or on vacation or super-busy with work or family).
24 Episodes is a nice round number because it is two complete years of Astounding. (Actually, 25 would be better because it would mean finishing 2012 with the December 1943 issue. But I’ll stick with 24.) I would be nice to get more readers and get the word more widely spread about this project, but that kind of thing is mostly out of my control. Reading the issues and then writing about them is a lot of fun for me. I’d do it even if no one read the posts.
2. Write at least 24 new Wayward Time Traveler columns
I have a lot of fun with the Wayward Time Traveler columns on SF Signal and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do them. Sometimes it is hard to come up with interesting topics, but I’m going to try to do better at that in 2012. Another thing that I’d like to do is to try and get a little ahead on the columns. I often find myself writing them a few days before they are posted. It would be nice to have a half dozen or so written and scheduled out to give me some breathing room throughout the year.
3. Business as usual here on my own blog
I’d given some thought to working out a schedule where I wrote a certain type of post on Mondays, another on Tuesdays, etc. But when I considered it, I realized that part of the appeal of blogging here for me is the randomness of the posts. Sometimes I’m writing about science fiction, other times about writing, other times about my kids, other times about what I’ve read, or something that has annoyed or amused me. This is the kind of random mix I’ve been doing since I started my blog in late 2005.
That said, I averaged nearly 2 posts/day in 2011. It is possible that you will see fewer posts (say, about one/day) in 2012. The reason for this is:
4. Fiction-writing takes precedence over all other writing
If I am going to meet my fiction-writing goals for 2012, then I have to give them precedence over the other kind of writing that I do. If that means cutting down to one post per day on occasion, so be it.
Of course, I am always open to suggestions about how I can improve things on the blog, so feel free to comment or drop me a line and let me know what you like or don’t like.
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