I should be content to work on the Big Project, that will be requiring unrelenting attention until done. The completion of editing, then getting between covers and spreading the word will take all available minutes, keystrokes and synapses firing. And yet, I can’t keep from gathering bits of wit or wisdom from my early morning browse that at one time would have gone automatically into the blog.
Wordpress no longer is my virtual coffee shop. The few that subscribe are shocked to see a posts, two weeks since the last one. Some of my anonymous stats randomly drop by from a search engine. Relatives feel obliged to read because they feel sorry for the old coot, writing in the dark to nobody.
And this is not okay. True, I can’t give the energy to peripheral topics, but those things that grab my attention feed into my energy for writing in general—writing as a way of thinking—and this has the potential to feed the Big Project as it coalesces many big ideas not fully formed. Little of my opus is sealed up and done.
So what to do? Facebook attracts some readers, but gaining audience I think means paying for it. Medium.com also I think I understand needs a monthly fee if you want to gain paying readers. Substack—come into my awareness for newsletters just this past week, seems to offer some possible traction for having conversations with myself that resonate with others who have similar passions, skillsets or interests.
I like the way Medium handles images, and I am a visual writer—meaning that given an image, especially one of my own, I can weave a story much better than writing to a blank screen of white.
Well there you go. Images can be pasted in, but without the option of styles that Medium offers. (Image is a member of the aster family, common name Burnweed—a native plant I just this summer bothered to find a name for. And this is the kind of subject matter the blog once offered to eager readers. Anyone? Anyone?
Who is the audience for Substack, and how do I reach them? I have homework. And at some point, I want to talk about and FROM the Big Project, my third book, being edited in a small press towards publication in a year, if I don’t get distracted.
Wait. I’m already distracted.