Every writer knows the daunting feeling of staring at the blank page. There’s promise and possibility. There’s a perfect story in your head, in that hazy wonderland where all characters are rounded and all plots are hole-free, and your brilliant, subtle themes give future literature professors whole semesters of discussion topics.
Unfortunately, as soon as it’s on the page, all the imperfections become obvious. Writing gets hard when you get down to the actual words. Like any other story, this blog is going to be one thing in my head, and another thing entirely when it’s on the page.
Bloggery
I’m going to talk about techniques and experiences. I’m going to point to things that I think are great, and do my best to explain why. I may review books or other media, but I’m more interested in what we can learn from it than any opinions on how “good” something is.
Serialized Fiction
Following in the footsteps of Dickens and Dumas, I’m going to be publishing free, (eventually) novel-length fiction here, hopefully weekly. This will be a fun experiment; I’ve never put work out into the world this way.
Writing…Live!
Another experiment I’d like to try is live-streaming writing sessions. The act of writing is oddly intimate, and while writers love to talk about writing, we rarely have an opportunity to see the first drafts or the editing as they happen. It may be a great way to start discussions. It might be a disaster. If nothing else, it should be interesting.
And More?
Of course, now that this post is nearly done, I find that it’s much worse than what I thought it would be, when the page was still blank. I’m sure there will be other things we do here. Other ideas. Other inspirations. We’ll keep some characters and kill off others. We’ll find the plot eventually. There will be a glorious arc. It’ll all work out.
At the very least, I’ll get it out of my head and onto the page.
Words Deferred 