This is my 365th consecutive post since August 28th of 2020.
I set out to prove to myself that I could accomplish a few things. One, to come up with new and interesting posts every day for a year. Check. Two, I wanted to share my writing and my writing process. Double check. My original intent was to share my writing journey as I wrote my debut novel, Fantastic America. I checked that box too, but it went by so quickly, the journey ended before the experiment was half over. And finally, as the experiment grew in scope, I wanted to connect with readers and other writers. All boxes checked.
Now that my experiment is over, and successful, I have to decide where to go from here. My first instinct is to only write once a week from now on, but honestly, writing a post a day has become part of my writing habit. Even on days I didn’t write anything else, it felt good to post something here to validate my other efforts. I haven’t decided one way or another yet.
I learned some valuable lessons.
I have learned a few other things during my experiment. I’m not great at getting people to engage with my content. Something I’ve been working on all year. I’ll keep working on that, whether I post every day from here on out or only when I feel like it. I also learned that I am a poor judge of what will stir people’s interest, or maybe I’m still learning how to judge that. I have plenty of work to do either way.
I also learned a bit about how I write. Early on I identified a couple of problems during editing of my posts that I still struggle with sometimes. It turns out I write long sentences. I’m not sure if that is good or bad, but as I recall, William Faulkner wrote long sentences, too. Not that I’m a renowned author of his stature, but at least I’m in good company. Other problems I found Grammarly to be a great help with, so much so that I ignore them until the program points them out.
All the posts I shared here are just the start, I learned just how many stories I have to tell (or show). Just in the past two months, I’ve created Torthal and Fractal, two very different worlds for two very different stories. Once my imagination is free, it runs loose and I build world after world full of stories to share.
Not quite, “So long, and thanks for all the fish…”
Finally, I’d like to thank those of you who’ve found me and stuck with me over the past year. I can count (usually on one hand) on a few of you to like whatever I’ve posted. Even when it was just a post to say I was sick or in the hospital, it still made me smile to see regular followers checking in on me. That may or may not have been your intent, but I told myself that was what you were doing.