For the three people who might care for a longer explanation...

Way back in the day I started this blog because I wanted to talk about history.  I’d just graduated and was working at a terrible job and was still looking for my history fix.  Blogging, then, made sense.  It is a subject that requires a great deal of writing and blogging allows for that.  I could basically write history papers all day.  And I’m a giant fucking nerd who at the time had a job that required no time, thought, or effort, so that totally appealed to me.

Eventually, as is the wont of existence in this mortal realm, the blog evolved.  When I decided to leave Christianity it became a place where I could talk about what I was going through.  Since I used a certain ex-girlfriend to drive the metaphor I pushed that in the direction of using the blog to talk about relationships.  Since I was exploring the story and the telling of stories, this blog was a natural outlet for my discussions of and meditation on the story and its nature.

The problem is that the way I used this blog was predicated on a simple, basic requirement: I need time.  My posts don’t usually just spring up out of nowhere, fully written.  The best ones took a couple hours to write after I thought about the underlying ideas for days or weeks.  It was the ultimate expression of the old admonition, “You think too much.”

Blogs were invented for those of us who want to justify thinking too much.

Anyway, one thing I avoided doing as much as possible was just shitting out a post.  It’s no fun to just be all, “Meh, I’ma write now.”  It’s no fun to read that, either.

This is where I’m now hitting a problem.  All I feel like I do anymore is shit out posts and slap them up for the sake of it.  At best that approach leads to stuff that’s not worth reading.  At worst it leads to, well, utter trash.[1]  I think I can do what I’ve always done, so I try to do it and it ends up as a complete failure because I’ve forgotten why I used to be able to write posts that mashed a half-dozen thoughts together.  That bit where I put some thought in to the crafting of a post and some time to make sure I’ve properly defined my terms and I know what the follow-up is?  Yeah, that kind of matters…

So, basically, what we have here is an argument for craftsmanship and quitting before you’ve worn out your welcome.

I’m just a guy who writes a blog.  I’ve never had a particularly big or sustained following (although I do have a remarkably consistent set of regulars.  Thanks, all).  That really never bugged me, as I wrote because I wanted to and the bit where no more than a dozen or so people seemed to care basically allowed me freedom to write exactly what I wanted to and that was great.

But what happens when the answer to, “What do I want to write?” turns out to be, “Nothing, really?”

At that point the greatest strengths of this blog become huge, gaping liabilities.  The bit where the purpose of this blog can be described as, “Whatever I want it to be,” becomes, “I don’t have a friggin’ clue what to write about right now, so I won’t,” or, “Well, this is on my mind, maybe I’ll throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.”  So I end up with posts that are objectively complete and utter shit.  If I’m lucky.  The bit where only a few people read the blog then becomes, “Well, I’m not exactly adding much of anything to any sort of larger dialogue, so why bother?” and, “Well, if I’ve got a choice between wasting peoples’ time with crap posts and not posting at all, I think I’ll choose the latter, thankyouverymuch.”

So this is the conundrum in which I find myself.  I don’t think my style (or mentality) allows for just occasionally throwing crap against the wall.  But I also don’t think that my life currently allows for going back to my old style of writing posts that are part of a series (or, at least, a series of interconnected thoughts).  I can’t really do, “Hey, here’s what happened today and here’s my response to it,” too often, since I usually get around to those posts about a week after it’s been reported on Yahoo News, which means I usually get around to it about a month after it’s been discussed to death already.

This is my conundrum.  As things stand I’m wasting your time and mine.  I’m not at all certain there is an option to avoid doing that while continuing to write this blog.

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[1]The proximate cause of the post in question, again, was N.K. Jemisin’s Trickster character in the Inheritance series.  I’ve been meaning to use that series, Ian Douglas’s Star Carrier books, and Catherynne Valente’s Dirge for Prester John books on a long series about the importance of world-building.  All of that was supposed to be a follow-on to the Night of the Living Dead Christian stuff.

But I never did any of that.  So from my perspective the post I wrote came in as a logical interstitial to a series of other thoughts.  From your perspective it came out of nowhere with a total, “What the fuck?  Srsly?”  At least, I imagine that’s how it comes across.

Comments

[Firedrake]

If you were a pro writer - by "pro", I mean "getting paid for it" - I'd say that creativity must become something you can turn on on demand, or you're in the wrong job.

But you're not getting paid for this. It's not a job. It's something you do for fun. If it's not being fun, you shouldn't be doing it.

Of course, we could just work out the whole problem with internet dating, set up a new site to do it right, and end up being richer than Bill. :-)

[sbh]

Thanks for the longer explanation. I read "Accidental Historian" fairly regularly, though I don't think I've ever been moved to comment here before. Speaking (selfishly) as a reader let me say I'd rather read your crap posts than read nothing at all from you, if it's all the same to you.

Obviously it isn't. Believe me, I fully understand about posts that take hours to write after weeks of thought, or about getting around to a current topic a month after it's been discussed to death. I appreciate the work that goes into them. You're not wasting my time--but the effort of reading is nothing compared to the effort of writing.

[Janet]

I admit, I come for the stories. I follow maybe a handful of blogs, with no real unifying theme among them, except that they are written thoughtfully, and artfully. The subject matters little. It is the form and style that I appreciate most. I am here because Geds is a storyteller, and that makes him mindful of his presentation.

Does that means Geds thinks too much? The world is filled with people who think too little, and speak anyhow. I hate to see Geds get discouraged simply because nothing has caught his passion lately. But I understand that time is precious. I quit TV for time. I deleted my facebook account for time. There are any number of ordinary things I don't bother with because they aren't worth my time. A life is finite. I spend a bit of mine reading this blog, because Geds is a good writer. I spend a bit more commenting, to let him know I appreciate it.