I’m climbing back into the blogging saddle. It’s a slow climb. At my peak I was writing multiple posts per day, and at times went years without missing a day. Those days are in the past, but I’ve been working up to posting 3 days a week.
The slow climb began in September with a weekly Tuesday post related to my reading. This week I added a Thursday post on some aspect of my writing. And going forward, I plan on a Saturday post on some miscellaneous subject that catches my interest. I suppose you can consider this the inaugural Saturday post.
I stopped writing for a while, but the desire to write never went away. Fiction has been more problematic. When I stopped writing, it was in part because I had started to write stories that no longer seemed to fit the markets to which I used to sell. Starting up on fiction has been more of a challenge. I feel like I am starting from scratch, and at times, I’ve felt almost as if I’ve forgotten how to write. I’m trying to overcome that. One way is by writing here, even if what I write is mostly nonfiction. In January, I’ll be returning to my writing group after an extended absence, and I’m hoping that will help.
Writing for this blog had always been fun. At times, it has been stressful. At its peak (2013-2014) I was getting more than 100,000 visitor a month, which for me was a big deal–that’s a huge audience. It also made things a bit daunting. I was writing about things that were hot topics at the time–my Going Paperless series was surprisingly popular–and I suspect many people came for that. Now, I’m writing about things that may not be hot topics to the rest of the world, but they matter to me.
I’ve given a lot of thought to what I want this blog to be, and I finally have something of a vision for it. I want this space to the be a kind of One Man’s Meat for the blogging age. In the late 1930s, E. B. White wanted to escape Manhattan. He and his wife fled New York for a farm in Maine. There, over a period of several years, White worked his farm, and wrote a column called “One Man’s Meat” about his life there for Harper’s magazine.
I’m not farming, but reading and writing are my analogs. I like the tone White captured in his essays, and while I am no E. B. White, it is that sense of making the mundane interesting–in reading, in writing, and anything else that comes to mind–that I am aiming for. That’s my vision for this blog in 2019. I hope you’ll stick around for it.
And if you like it, tell your friends.
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This sort of writing that you are talking about, the kind of writing E.B. White was producing in those columns and which you’ll be doing, is what I love to read (and write!) the most. I have found it really hard to find it even though non-fiction is having it’s moment. Masterful are those writers that, no matter what the topic, they can make you fascinated with it by the way they present it. I can’t wait to read more!
Thanks, Kathy. I can almost guarantee my posts won’t be as well-written as White’s, but I hope they will be interesting.
Keep up the good work, Jamie. I really enjoy and look forward to your posts, particularly the ones associated with reading.
I landed on this blog a few years ago while looking for writing tools (and so I found your Google docs script). Since then, I’ve been a follower and read your posts with great interest. Some of your recommendations from last year are on my to read-list. Thanks!