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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Why All the Filler? (Sunday Shorts)


Why not post less often if it's just going to be filler?

Don't forget to send me more questions at chris.brecheen@gmail.com

Alex writes: 

I've been following your blog for almost two years now (love it, by the way), and I was wondering why you do such weird posts about guest bloggers living in the basement and alien secretaries and posts about your life as a superhero and all that weird stuff. It seems like you're always super busy (no pun intended), but you don't even take weekends off. Why not post once or twice a week with your big articles? I don't mind the little stuff. I'm not complaining. In fact, after I figured out what's going on they're kind of fun. It just seems like if you know you're doing "jazz hands" you should just take a day off and write something bigger a few times a week. You might be happier.

My reply:

Sort of an appropriate question for our very first Sunday Short, Alex. Thanks.

There's a lot I could say about the success of a blog, writing every day, how to get the trickles from thousands of articles to add up to something that pays a bill or three, building an audience with a niche as impacted as snarky writing advice from a non-famous writer, and maybe Bradbury's advice about quality being quantity and how I never know what articles are going to take off, but the fact is that at the end of the day, all that crap is just me with a monocle and a snifter of brandy bloviating about shit that I wouldn't do differently if I found out tomorrow it was all wrong.

It's a big, steaming pile of my bullshit, Alex. The reason I blog every day, even if I write weird plots is because is the same (and only) reason to do any art. I love it. It's my work and my soul and on the worst days after I get some shitty post up that I know will never be read, I feel amazing.

I write all that weird crap because that's what I like writing. I enjoy taking a day every couple of weeks to tell you about my life in superhero allegories and telling you the fucked up things my "guest bloggers" do inside "the compound." I like constantly tinkering on the menus without shutting down the blog for an "admin hiatus" or cleaning up the old articles to show you how powerful revision can be.

And about the plots, if people skip that crap, fine. Let em. Not everyone understands what I'm doing with them, or why. And if they can't figure out that right around when a baby showed up, I started fighting a new super villain that enjoys stealing my time or that half of my creative voices stopped talking to me because one bitterly sarcastic voice who likes to make fun of the poofy bullshit that writers sell themselves to not write every day like I still manage to we keep getting attacked by a mystery blogger, that's fine.

I love having an audience, and I hope it grows, but I'm writing for myself.

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