Category: meta

State of the Blog — November 2025

My “State of the Blog” posts are something I’ve been doing since the start of Words Deferred. Back when I was posting more frequently, I’d write these every six months. In 2024, I decided to switch to a yearly cadence—and now I dropped the ball and I’m two months late.

Previous Posts

Metrics

  • Years Blogging: 5
  • Total Posts: ~550
  • WordPress Subscribers: 159
  • Monthly Views: 760 (avg. over last 3 months)

Noteworthy numbers in the past year include the all-time view count hitting 20,000, and highest daily views hitting 213.

The 2024 Slump

Words Deferred has never been “big,” but the stats showed steady growth from 2020-2023. During that first couple years I posted quite a lot, aided by projects like Razor Mountain and journaling through NaNoWriMo, where my fiction writing time and blogging were tightly intertwined. I was also trying a lot of different ideas, still figuring out what exactly I wanted this website to be.

In 2024, I embarked on my Year of Short Stories, where I focused on writing, editing, and submitting short stories. That was a great experience, radically increasing my comfort level with all aspects of writing and submitting work, and I also got some of my work published, which is nice.

That project set me up for one weekly post documenting my progress and submissions. My other posts were less frequent, and ultimately the blog was quieter than previous years. The Year of Short Stories was a project that took most of my writing time and energy, and since I was planning to submit the stories I was writing, I couldn’t use those as content. I also suspect that my weekly updates were less likely to draw in readers from week to week in the same way that something like Razor Mountain’s ongoing story might.

Whatever factors contributed, 2024 was the first year since the start of the blog where I saw the metrics go down—a roughly 30% drop from 2023. I generally try not to pay too much attention to the numbers (outside of these retrospective posts), but I’ll admit that a drop like that is a little disheartening. It begs the question, “have I already peaked?” It’s a lot easier to ignore the relatively low view counts when they’re at least going up every year.

2025: The Year of…Nothing in Particular?

As 2025 rolled around, I found myself once again at the crossroads where I’d finished another writing/blogging project, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do next. Over the years, I’ve learned that I work most effectively when I have some big project like this to focus on. I think it also makes for good bloggery when there’s a big project to talk about week after week. Documenting those writing projects helps me get through them, and hopefully provides something interesting to post. When I don’t have a long-term focus, I tend to flail around and procrastinate.

Going into this year, I was burned out on short stories. For lack of a better idea, I decided to try tackling a different project each month. What were those projects going to be? I didn’t really know.

For January, I picked an easy one: write a page per day. No problem. I’ve probably done ten NaNoWriMos, at least half of them successful, and this was a much easier version of that. I finished first drafts of two short stories, and even wrote some goofy fan-fiction for a game I was playing at the time, something I’ve never done before.

Then February hit, and I stalled out hard. I had several completed drafts sitting around, and I’d been struggling to find the motivation to revise them. I figured that would be a good goal, but I never really picked out a particular metric to hold myself to.

Then I was sick for a few days. The kids were sick for a few days. School activities started and I ended up being a mentor/coach. We had some family medical issues. Before I knew it, my plans were long-abandoned. I ended up having more than one month in 2025 where I didn’t post anything, and I wasn’t writing much outside the blog either.

It’s never been hard for me to find reasons not to write—hence the name of the site—but the first half of 2025 was chock full of them. Without a big, clear, overarching project to keep me going, I dropped off the map for a while.

Second Wind

Looking back, I didn’t really get my feet under me, writing-wise, until summer. The kids finished school for the year, activities were over, and the medical issues were mostly resolved.

I spiffed up the blog layout ever so slightly, added Recommendations and Support Me pages, and took stock of my recurring post formats. Now that I’m into year five of Words Deferred, I’ve found a few formats that I enjoy writing and can keep coming back to:

The articles I most enjoy writing are still those that dig into the art and craft of writing, from brainstorming to revision to publishing trends. And while I enjoy having a big project to work on throughout the year, I found that I can lean on these recurring series to have something interesting to write about at least once a week, and keep my pen to the paper.

Oddly enough, my number of posts published in 2025 will probably work out similarly to 2024, maybe even a little less, thanks to how little I was writing through June. However, my views have been rising steadily ever since then, and I’m already getting way more eyeballs than 2024. Will I hit beat the 2023 peak? I don’t think so, but it’s looking more possible.

SEO for Dummies

Are there some sort of lessons to be learned about search engines and keywords and maximizing internet points in all this? Probably. The only reason I noticed my views were going up again was because WordPress sent me a little notice to say “Hey, we were surprised to see some people are reading what you wrote.” So I looked at the “Insights” tab on my dashboard, and that only confused me more.

The only app I automatically share posts on is Bluesky. In previous years, I used to share on TwiXter, back before the bots and assholes took over and they shut down the socialist blog-posting APIs in favor of their glorious, free-market, All-American blue checkmarks. So of course it makes sense that WordPress tells me I got about 6,000 shares each on Facebook, X, Reddit and Tumblr, where I never post anything.

I don’t know how this is possible. If you’re sharing my posts on Facebook and Tumblr, please reach out and clear this up for me.

And what exactly is a “share?” Clearly not the same as a “view.” Maybe a “glance?” But then, when people read my articles through the email subscription, that doesn’t count as a view either. Google also sends me monthly search statistics that appear to wildly overestimate just how much traffic they’re sending my way. They use the even more vague term “impressions.” I can only assume an “impression” according to Google means that my website was on page 10 of the search results when someone skimmed the AI overview.

I checked the WP and Google search insights. I seem to be coming up in roughly the same searches as I have been for years. I found out that I’m cited in the Wikipedia article for “Mystery Box.” That’s kind of fun, and apparently counted for 3 whole clicks. Who is clicking that? ChatGPT helpfully sent seven people my way. Why? Maybe they asked it why people hate LOST so much.

In conclusion, the internet is a unfathomable beast. It giveth and it taketh away. None can know its true heart, and those who claim to do so are false prophets.

What’s Next?

I’m itching for another big project. But when I say “big,” that might just mean The Year of Even More Short Stories. Whatever it is, it’ll be intermingled with the usual things, the Read Reports and Story Idea Vaults and random game and TTRPG musings, and maybe even another poem.

Let’s all just try to make it to the end of the year, and then we’ll see where 2026 takes us.

Recommendations

Blogs are ancient technology, an elegant weapon from a more civilized age, and nowadays they can be found mainly in museums. However, back in their heyday, blogs were so popular that their authors would post lists of their favorite blogs on their own blogs in a sort of blogception. They called it a blogroll. Yes, people once used the term “blogroll” with utter seriousness.

Being an ancient artifact myself, I’ve been thinking for a while that I ought to make one of these blogroll things. I’ve also occasionally thought about off-topic posts where I talk about my favorite music or movies, but we all know that successful blogging requires total focus on your chosen topic, and if I veered off into something like music, I’d never get any views or subscriptions ever again.

Luckily, I’ve found a loophole. I’ve created the Recommendations page! It’s in the menu! You can get to it from every page!

Now I can have lists of my favorite blogs, books, movies, games, TV, music, tabletop games, and more—all without cluttering up that precious RSS feed—another ancient technology that I’m sure you’re all using. I’ll be updating these lists…sometimes. Occasionally. Whenever I come across something so good it needs to go in a top ten list for a while.

And as long as we’re being off-topic, feel free to comment and tell me about whatever show, movie, song, game, book, podcast, TTRPG, or anything else that’s got you excited today.

Monetizing Myself

Being a writer is strange. You have to be full of yourself to believe that others will want to read these things you’ve written, but you also need to be insecure enough to spend endless hours obsessively revising and improving those same things.

Gone are the days when a moderately successful writer could live out of a Parisian hotel. Now, you’re lucky if you don’t have to be your own marketing department and shell out thousands up front for an editor, while still holding down a day job.

Money and writing often feel like a Venn diagram that’s just two separate circles. The writerly split self-image is necessary here too. You’ve got to simultaneously think that someone might actually want to pay you, and continue working hard even when nobody does.

This is all a very roundabout way of explaining that I’ve added a new page to the menu where you can support me by buying things on Bookshop.org, signing up for Libro.fm, or directly sending me a dollar. I don’t expect that anyone is clamoring to give me their money just because I run this little blog, but now the option is there, just in case.

Monetization Options

That begs the question, what would I need to do to be “worthy” of a random dollar here or there from passing internet pedestrians?

In the modern futuristic gig economy, the cool thing to do would be to set up some kind of crowd-funding or techno-patronage system like a Kickstarter or a Patreon. I’d be interested in doing something like that some day, but it would require having a plan, a good sales pitch, and an exciting product or service provided on a deadline.

In the writing and fiction space, there are a few successful examples of this in print magazines and web zines. It varies from just another magazine subscription system to added bonus content or physical editions, to just regularly begging for donations. I also occasionally see individual authors monetizing, which usually involves either a Substack/Medium blog subscription, or a little storefront for selling self-published work.

The paid blog route really requires a time and effort investment in blogging or newsletters. That’s something I know I could do, because I’ve written fairly consistently and frequently for this blog in the past. However, it would make this feel more like a job—without any guaranteed paycheck. I enjoy blogging and the meta aspect of discussing everything writing-related, but I see it as a fun side project to my fiction. Monetizing the side project would force it to be the main project, and I don’t want fiction to be a side gig to the blog.

For the Patreon route, I’d want to send out fiction as a reward. I’d be hesitant to commit to something like a new story each month, but building up a set of 12 stories in advance sounds feasible. Heck, it could be a good way to give new life to stories that have already been published, without the hassle of trying to sell reprints to magazines or anthologies.

I could also see doing something with Razor Mountain, if I ever get around to properly revising it. A novel might be more appealing for some readers than a collection of short stories, and I could add in some of the material I documented about the process of writing a novel, which was the main appeal (at least to me) of that whole project.

Finding an Audience

Crowd funding doesn’t do any good without a crowd. The real challenge is getting any project like this in front of people who might be legitimately interested in it.

I’ve blogged long enough to know that it’s not easy to build an audience. Having work published and blogging with focus and consistency are probably the two best ways to build that, but there’s also a strong element of luck. Even with all three, it can take years or decades to find people, and it’s easy to lose them by shifting focus or just taking time off.

I have been hesitant to put any monetization on the blog because my audience just isn’t very big. On the other hand, it’s not clear when the right time is to start monetizing. My current thinking is that as long as it’s unobtrusive, it’s unlikely to turn people off, and I can start small and figure things out as I go.

What’s Next?

As usual, I’ll treat this as an experiment and try to be open about it in case the information is useful to others. I don’t have any specific plans and I don’t expect to add more monetization soon.

I’m interested to hear from any other bloggers/authors who are doing any kind monetization. What have you tried? What works or doesn’t work for you? Let me know in the comments.

New Year’s Writing Resolutions

The champagne popped, the ball dropped, and New Year’s is behind us. Now that we’re firmly in the frigid grip of a new January, it’s time for some updates.

I normally don’t go in for New Year’s resolutions, but with my year of short stories now complete, it feels like a good time to reevaluate my writing, the blog, and my goals.

New Monthly Goals

With my serial novel Razor Mountain, I spent two years focused on a single project and eventually ended up burned out. My 2024 year of short stories allowed me to pursue a looser goal where I could work on a variety of different short stories.

In 2025, I’d like to work on something I’ve long struggled with: output. Between my day job and my family, I’m a fairly busy person. I’m also a natural procrastinator, and I know that I often need deadlines (even if they’re artificial ones) to get things done. Previous years’ projects have helped me focus and finish things, but I’m always dogged by the desire to get more done.

My initial idea for 2025 was a simple daily word count, fairly low so I could get used to it. At the beginning of January I decided I would write about a page per day—250 words. My January has already been a little crazy, and I’ve only written on about 50% of the days so far, but I have managed to “catch up” the days I missed, and I’ve stuck to my overall page-per-day requirement. I expect to have at least two short story drafts finished by the end of the month, which is very good for me.

However, I’m already seeing a problem with this word count quota. It’s getting me to write those first drafts, but I’m going to be kicking the can on revisions. I already had Red Eyes revisions carried over from last year, and now I’ll have at least two other drafts that need to be critiqued and polished.

So, instead of carrying my page-per-day goal through the whole year, I’ll only commit to it in January. When February rolls around, I’ll pick a new daily goal, like fifteen minutes of revisions per day. This flexibility will hopefully keep me productive, while allowing me to adjust my goals throughout the year.

The Return of Razor Mountain

That flexibility also gives me the opportunity to do something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I “finished” Razor Mountain in the sense that it’s a complete story, but it could be better. I’ve had some time away from it, and I’m excited to bring it back in 2025. I haven’t decided how much time I’ll spend, but I do plan to start working on revisions again.

The whole point of Razor Mountain was to document the process of writing a novel, so I will also  continue that tradition by posting all the details of my process, my struggles, and my successes.

More Short Stories

I really enjoyed writing and submitting short stories in 2024, so I plan to dedicate a large amount of my time this year to writing even more of them. I think writing short stories has helped me improve my writing significantly. I love being able to get feedback on something small and self-contained, and I’ve learned almost as much from critiquing other people’s stories.

More Bloggy Stuff?

I don’t yet know how much of my short story work will show up on the blog. I know I’m having a good time, but I suspect my weekly recaps aren’t the most riveting content. In 2025, I’ll probably be more judicious and only post about short stories when I have some bigger topic to talk about.

I will continue some of my long-running series like monthly Read Reports and the Story Idea Vault. I have a backlog of narrative video games to play for my “Games for People Who Prefer to Read” series. I might even perform some necromancy and revive a few of my older posts with new commentary and expanded ideas.

I do sometimes miss the days of years past when I would consistently post here 2-3 times per week. I’d love to say that I’ll be more active like that again, but I think I’d be lying. I just don’t have the bandwidth to do that while pursuing my other writing projects. Still, I love the blog, and I greatly appreciate the folks who continue to stop by. I still expect to post at least once per week.

What About You?

I’m curious if you have any New Year’s writing resolutions. What’s working, what’s not, and what do you plan to change? Let me know in the comments.

My 500th Post!

As 2024 comes to a close, I’ve reached a shocking milestone: 500 posts. Words Deferred started as an experiment in trying to write (and think about writing) more, and has become an integral part of my life. It’s strange to remember a time when I wasn’t documenting my writing and putting my thoughts out onto the internet.

I don’t normally go back and read my old posts, but I decided to use this occasion to peruse those 500 posts and see what stood out.

2020

I started Words Deferred in the autumn of 2020, almost exactly a decade after blogs stopped being cool. (Of course, blogs are still around, but like everything else on the internet they now have to live on a platform like Medium or Substack.) Looking back at those early days, I really didn’t know what I was going to be writing, but had some ideas: posts about technique, serialized fiction, and…live-streaming writing sessions?

I haven’t streamed anything, and I probably never will, but those other two categories were the core content of this site for quite some time. I quickly started the Reference Desk series about tools and resources for writers, which eventually grew to twenty-one entries. I also began to experiment with posts about craft and technique in those first few months, like Outlining vs. Exploratory Writing, Writing Spikes, and Guessing the Future for Science Fiction.

2021

Around the end of 2020, I also began working on Razor Mountain, my episodic sci-fi mystery novel. I eventually wrote 47 “pre-production” development journals that covered the process of outlining a novel, crafting a book description and author bio, and making a cover image. I began actually writing and posting chapters of Razor Mountain in late 2021, and continued the development journals as I went.

The other things I did in 2021 were mostly to get a break from planning and writing Razor Mountain. I played around with the shortest of short stories: microfiction and drabbles. I was looking for good writing blogs on WordPress, and started posting reblogs as a result of that. I began a sporadic series about Games for People who Prefer to Read, and started my tradition of the State of the Blog.

2022

I have always been leery of traditional reviews, and I’ve struggled to find interesting ways to discuss the things I was reading. In 2022, that mostly took the form of X Things I Learned from Y posts. Later in the year, I incorporated that into my Storytelling Class series where I discussed different aspects of writing fiction with my daughter.

I continued posting Razor Mountain chapters and the corresponding development journals through all of 2022, making it about halfway through the book by the end of the year.

I also found time for a seven-part series on writing short stories, and a complete re-theming of Words Deferred to the current look and feel.

2023

I posted the final chapter of Razor Mountain in the summer of 2023. Razor Mountain was a huge project, and I knew it would require a ton of revision to get into a state where I could consider it properly done. I also knew that the way it was developed would make it challenging to sell in traditional publishing, and I didn’t find self-publishing it very appealing. After posting the final chapter, I collected some feedback and began revisions, but I was feeling burned out and eventually decided to step away from the project.

Further evolution of book reviews resulted in a new format, the read reports. I also somehow managed to complete a full NaNoWriMo while writing daily updates, which was likely my heaviest month of writing since starting this website.

2024

This year, I cut back significantly on my posting schedule, and I’m on track for about 1/2 the wordcount of previous years. That was mainly to allow for more non-blog writing time.

That non-blog writing time was devoted primarily to the Year of Short Stories, a project that allowed me to really mix up my writing life. Not only could I write many different stories in different styles, but I could break up my time between first drafts; critique and revisions; and submissions. It was a great year of writing, and it only made me more excited to continue writing short stories.

Other content this year included a solidification of the format of Read Reports with a monthly cadence.

I had long considered some sort of brainstorming or writing prompt series, and that finally manifested as the Story Idea Vault.

Statistics

Finally, I like to be open with my data, just in case it’s interesting to others. Here are some statistics from a little over 4 years of blogging.

  • Posts: 500
  • Total Wordcount: 439,000
  • Views: 15,770 (not counting WP Reader or email subs, as far as I can tell)
  • Visitors: 11,468 (again, not counting Reader or email)
  • Most Views in a Day: 105
  • Most Popular Post: Great Writing – Can You Say Hero? (over 5000 views)
  • Most Posts in a Month: 29 in Nov. 2023 (for NaNoWriMo)

What’s Next?

The end of my Year of Short Stories and the start of 2025 means it’s time to think about change. I’m currently thinking about my writing New Year’s resolutions and how I want to schedule my work over the next year. I’ll talk more about that in an upcoming post.

State of the Blog — Aug 2024

Amazingly, it has been almost four years since I started this blog. It has become such a part of my life that I have a hard time remembering the days when I didn’t send my thoughts out to the internet on a semi-weekly basis.

I strive to document my process, if only for the curiosity of other writers—from my Razor Mountain project documenting the first draft of a novel, to my NaNoWriMo series, to my current series where I’m spending the year writing and submitting short fiction.

My “State of the Blog” posts document the blog itself. I used to do these every six months, but I switched to a yearly schedule in 2023.

Previous Posts

Metrics

  • Years blogging: 4
  • Total posts: 473
  • Total followers: 149
  • Monthly views: 299 (average over last 3 months)

The Year of Short Stories…and Less Blogging

The fairly obvious narrative when comparing the stats to 2023 is that the blog has slowed down considerably. In my first three years, I averaged 126 posts per year, which is about 2.5 posts per week. This year, I produced only 95 posts, or 1.8 posts per week, and the daily posts during last year’s NaNoWriMo even skew that a bit higher compared to the rest of the year. Sheer posting volume isn’t the be-all, end-all for a blog, but it does have an impact. All other things being equal, more posts make the stats go up.

I did plan to reduce my post frequency in 2024, although I ended up posting even less than I planned. Part of that was the intrusion of non-writing priorities. I moved to a new house, and my family and day job have kept me plenty busy.

Part of it was that I didn’t have a project like Razor Mountain, which lent itself to frequent posts. My “Year of Short Stories” series was, in some ways, the replacement for my Razor Mountain series, but that’s one post per week and occasionally less.

Another explanation for these statistics is the sort of content I’ve been posting. Razor Mountain (and the NaNoWriMo series, to some extent) had the advantage of an ongoing story to bring readers back on a regular basis, as well as the “development” portions that were more focused on the writing process. I’m very purposely excluding my actual fiction from my “Year of Short Stories” series, because you can’t sell first rights to a story if it’s already been publicly published—even on a blog. I’m writing approximately the same amount, but less of it is blog fodder.

I also don’t expect that “Year of Short Stories” is always the most exciting content for my readership. I hope it provides some value, if only for writers to compare to their own experiences and expectations, but I do it partly for myself. It gives me a record of what I’ve been working on, and motivates me to keep making progress every week.

New Content

Seeing the WordPress graphs go up is not the most important thing in the world, but I would like to feel that I’m providing something interesting for more readers. To that end, I have been thinking about how to spruce up the blog and post more. However, I am still committing the bulk of my writing time to work that isn’t going up on the blog. I think it’s the only way to progress my writing career. So, I want to post more things that readers like. I just don’t want it to take too much time or effort. Easy, right?

My first new experiment is the Story Idea Vault series, which started this past week. I’m excited about this, because I think most writers like prompts and ideas, and these are easy posts to write. I have huge documents full of story ideas, so I could write weekly posts for years without running out. This also gives me a good excuse to do a little brainstorming every week or two, in order to come up with new ideas.

And while I haven’t been posting as much in 2024, I’ve developed a backlog of half-finished posts. I may put a little more time into finishing some of those to give the blog more life. Still, what I would really like to find is another ongoing series that focuses more on the craft side of writing, as these are the type of posts that have mostly been MIA in the past year.

Razor Mountain

I was recently contacted by one of my old beta readers for Razor Mountain, wondering about the status of the story. I was a little sad to tell them that it’s effectively on hiatus.

As much as I enjoyed the experiment of writing a novel in public, the first draft is really only half of the work. To make it the best book it can be, I would need to dedicate months of effort to revision and critique. That would be a nice second act to the Razor Mountain series, and I do think it’s important to shed light on that part of the process. There is depressingly little writing about the struggles of editing and revision (and not just the grammar and copy-editing parts).

Unfortunately, writing Razor Mountain in public means that it would be very difficult to get a traditional agent or publisher interested in it. Unless the blog suddenly blew up and got millions of views, traditional publishing doesn’t want something that people have already seen. And despite my best efforts, I just can’t get myself excited about self-publishing.

I understand, at an intellectual level, that self-pub is a significant chunk of the landscape these days, and that it’s the way that many authors make their careers. Even so, I grew up in the era where traditional publishing was the only game in town, and I still have a certain…romanticism?…bias?…toward trad pub. Could I feel satisfied with a physical copy of my book, if I hadn’t first convinced a jaded, chain-smoking agent and an overworked, sassy editor that the book was worth spending time and money on? I don’t know. Say what you want about my biases, but we all have to follow the path that feels right. For me, that doesn’t include self-publishing, at least for now.

I haven’t given up on properly finishing Razor Mountain, but I won’t be picking it up again in 2024. I’m enjoying writing short fiction and getting involved in all the aspects of writing from idea to submission. It’s fun and satisfying to produce a heap of stories in the time that one novel would take. That doesn’t mean Razor Mountain is dead. It’s sleeping. I just need to figure out how to get excited about it again.

Thanks for Reading!

If you’re one of my regular (or even occasional) readers, know that you’re appreciated. As writers, we’re all throwing words out into the world and hoping that someone will read them. You doing that for me may not feel like much, but it’s nice to be heard.

If you have any thoughts about Words Deferred, or more generally, what you’re looking for or enjoying in blogs, feel free to drop a comment and let me know.

A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds

I’ve always loved this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and not just for the image of a monster wriggling out of a tiny brain.

Modern life is rigid in many ways. School and work train us to believe that consistency should be valued and striven after. For many modern creators, the internet and its algorithms reward consistency. But we’re not robots, and consistency is often the enemy of creativity. The human brain is a creativity machine, but it needs constant stimulus and surprise as grist for the mill.

One of the things I’ve been consistent about over the last few years is this blog. Granted, I don’t always stick to a tight schedule, but over more than four hundred posts, I’ve rarely gone more than a week or two between posting. I’m happy about that, but I do wonder if it’s a bit of “foolish consistency”.

Life has been busy lately, and one of the results of that has been a sparseness and lack of variety here on the blog. So, I decided to take a little writing break. In that time, I moved to a new house and sorted out some of those dull real-life things that need doing.

Now I’m back, refreshed, with some new ideas. I’m currently on a much-needed vacation at the lake—the perfect time to write. I’ll be catching up on my short story submissions, and I may have some table-top content coming up in the not too distant future.

For now, here’s the peaceful panorama from the shore.

2024 is the Year of Short Stories

Early in the life of this blog, way back in 2020, I made my novel Razor Mountain a main feature. I thought it would be interesting to document the process of writing a book from start to finish, and put it out episodically. This had the added benefit of aligning my blogging with the fiction I wanted to complete. It kept me writing, and kept the blog active. I believe the tech bros call this “leveraging synergies.”

However, all good things come to an end, or at least slow to a crawl. I’m still in the process of revising Razor Mountain, but I’ve found that there just isn’t as much worth writing about in the revision process as there was when I was working toward a first draft.

In November, I participated in NaNoWriMo, and it turned into a similar project almost by accident. I started writing about the process every day, and decided to stick with it for the entire month. The result was an extremely smooth NaNoWriMo experience, where I was able to reflect on what I was writing.

2024

Now, a new year has been released from a secret compartment in the ceiling, and threatens to roll over us like that boulder from Indiana Jones. I don’t really believe in New Year’s resolutions, but I do have a new goal for the year, which is both simple and difficult: write, edit, and submit as many short stories as possible.

Since it has worked well for me with other projects, I’m going to try blogging my way through this as well. This is self-serving: I want my writing here to encourage me to accomplish my fiction goals. The current plan is to do weekly updates, but I may adjust that depending on how much I have to say.

For each short story, I expect to

  1. Come up with a concept
  2. Write a draft
  3. Revise
  4. Submit to Critters for feedback
  5. Revise again
  6. Find a suitable publication via Duotrope
  7. Submit the story

As usual with the traditional publishing process, rejection is the norm. So once a story is out for submission, it will likely rack up a number of rejections. Even for successful short story authors, this is pretty normal. It’s rough out there.

As with my previous projects, my goal is to provide transparency for the curious. I’ll be honest about my successes and failures, and I expect there to be plenty of failures. But it should be fun, and I have no doubt I’ll learn a lot in the process.

The Short Story Series

As long as we’re talking about short stories, I’ll take a moment to plug my series about writing short stories. I wrote these in mid-2022. I’ve been thinking about a project like this for a while.

Some Numbers Happened

This August was the three-year anniversary of Words Deferred. Around that same time I also hit 10,000 views.

Is that a good amount? Who knows. It’s certainly ramped up since that first year, when I was more-or-less shouting into the void.

It’s hard to believe it has already been that long. But then, the flow of time broke sometime in 2020, so now everything gets lost in the temporal vortex.

Anyway, thanks for hanging out and talking about writing with me!

State of the Blog — Aug 2023

It’s almost my three-year blogoversary!

Since I started this blog, I’ve done a “State of the Blog” post every six months. This is the sixth such post.

One of the key tenets of this blog is an open writing process. I’ve brought that to my serial novel Razor Mountain with development journals, and I bring it to the blogging process with these posts.

Previous Posts

Metrics

  • Years blogging: 3
  • Total posts: 378
  • Total followers: 137
  • Monthly views: 555 (average over last 3 months)

The Curve Gets Weird

For quite some time, I’ve seen visitors to the blog increase steadily. There might be a month or two where numbers would drop, but they inevitably kept creeping up. In December of 2022, I saw the biggest peak up to that point, as presumably more people who like to read blogs do so when they have some extra vacation time over the holidays.

After that, the graph got weird. Up and down constantly, and not much growth on average. Why? I don’t really know. Maybe I’ve been posting a little less consistently. Not much, but a little.

I have a few regular readers, but more than half of my usual traffic comes from search, and search traffic seems to be more variable these days. I can see why people who obsess over traffic or try to make money at this would get into all the little intricacies of SEO, keywords, etc. It’s strange to see a change in the pattern and not really understand why.

The End of Razor Mountain

Six months ago, I could just barely see the end of Razor Mountain in the distance. This July, I posted the final chapter.

This felt like a turning point for the blog. I’ve been working on Razor Mountain almost since the beginning. Between the actual episodes and the development journals, it accounts for 171 posts, about 45% of the entire blog.

I was so eager to finish the book, I didn’t think that much about what effect it would have on Words Deferred. Sure, I still have to do revisions, but the reality is that it’s going to be a very different blog, now that I’m not posting so much Razor Mountain.

For now, I plan to continue some of my other regular posts—monthly read reports and general writing topics.

Updated Posting Schedule

One of the great things about writing Razor Mountain was that blogging and writing fiction were intermingled. I could do both at the same time. However, as much as I enjoyed the experiment, I plan to write my next novel in private.

As a result, I can’t continue to dedicate so much time to the blog if I want to keep up with my actual writing. As a result, I plan on cutting back. The fact that I’ve been posting 2-3 times per week for so long is shocking to me, considering how challenging it seemed when I first started.

I’m still committed to posting at least once per week, so it’s not like I’ll be disappearing. I have quite a backlog of topics I’d like to write about.

Next Time

Speaking of cutting back—now that I’ve done six of these on a bi-annual basis, I’ll be switching to once-per-year assessments. I still like having this chance to look back at what I’ve done and think about what’s next, but the blog isn’t young and new anymore, and I don’t feel the need to do it quite so frequently.

The next few months will be a change, but hopefully a good one.

Thanks for reading!