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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?

Thursday, January 11, 2018

2018 Update Schedule (Buckle up Broflakes and SQiD's)

Text in image: "Dear haters, I have
so much more for you to be mad at.
Just be patient."
If you're the type of fragile broflake, edgelord, or SQiD who threaten to leave Writing About Writing every time I deign to suggest that social issues A) matter, B) are affected by things like written language, C) are features, not bugs of our deep seated culture, D) a progenitor culture that might just be influenced by the arts, media, and entertainment, and E) that bigotry sucks, then this post might make you gnash–

Eh, you know what? I don't give a shit. Actually, it might give me one of those shivers of ecstasy–not quite a full-on Big O, but definitely pleasant.

The reason this update schedule change, which SHOULD be quite simple, is literally taking me weeks to accomplish is chiefly because Breath of Wind is pretty cool there aren't enough hours in the week.

While my update schedules are mostly for me, and perhaps the three or four readers drooling to know how often they can expect some various type of update to show up ("How often does he do a mailbox? Damn it, man! I need a mailbox! I must know! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, I MUST KNOW!!!!"), one of my goals for 2018 was to revamp the seat-of-my-pants flying that I'd been doing for....oh about three fucking years now. At least since cancer, and probably more like since The Contrarian popped in.

I put it to the Patrons what they wanted to see more of.

Then I tried to set up a schedule with that in it.

And basically I got an error message. "We're sorry, but you have either tried to divide by zero or think that you can get 10 updates a week into a 7 update a week schedule. Do you wish to restart from the save point before you blew up the entire universe in a gout of flame and screaming babies?"

*click "Yes"*

*start over*

So here's the problem. Seven updates a week. Somewhere around THIRTY-FIVE different segments we do (not including polls) that I'd like to rotate through on a regular basis.  And four of those segments are going weekly (and one twice-weekly) leaving exactly three slots a week open to rotate through the other thirty segments, some of which should be bi-weekly.

You see why I'm adding a 27th dimension to get the bosonic string calculus to work. I mean otherwise we'd have to fire up the T/S vortex portals and we kind of learned that was a less-than-capital idea during the first season.

The MCP is working on this when it's not playing frisbee with Tron, but the idea of an "Update Schedule" the way we've had them in the past (Monday is personal update day. Tuesdays I upload myself eating a taco....)  is basically going the way of the Dodo. I had to design something completely different from the ground up. (Let's turn that into a motivational quote!)

"I had to design something completely different from the ground up."

So what I've come up with instead is more like a few guaranteed "staple" posts each week, every other week, and the rest of the segments I will kind of handle like a two month cycle of Deal-A-Meal* posts, trying to work through all of them without repeating before starting over:

SEVEN POSTS PER WEEK

Weekly
  • Two Mailboxes a week (might be one educational and one not or one old and one new or one long and one short or one red and one blue, but it'll be two)
  • One "Educational" Post (listicle, craft, process, basics, etc...)
  • A "plot arc" post or something otherwise fun and silly
Bi-Weekly
  • Personal Update/Novel Progress
  • Reviews (Craft Books, Products, Movies, or Twizzlefizzlepop)
  • Social Justice Bard
  • Guest Posts
  • Deliberate Jazz Hands (Writing Metaphors, Linguistics & Grammar, Blogging about Blogging, The Weirdosity of Fledgling Fame, etc...)
Monthly
  • VLOG
  • Inspiration
  • Prompts
  • "Guest" Bloggers (Leela Bruce, Evil Mystery Blogger, Cannon, Guy Goodman)
  • Fiction
Freeform (Done in place of full posts on days I'm busy or sick, as needed [such as in the case of polls], or overwhelmed )
  • Polls (Calls for nominations, Polls, Reminders to Vote/Nominate, Results)
  • Potpourri
  • Pointer Sisters Links
  • Fluffy Jazz Hands (Fortune Cookies, Meta Updates, Bellwethers, Extra plot posts, etc...)

  • As a reminder I still nanny for a four year old, sometimes have more pet sitting than I can handle and teach summer school six weeks a year, and my host body occasionally succumbs to your Earth illnesses, so those times may not be 7 posts like clockwork or may involve going off the rails of my usual updates
  • This should also cut down on the thing where I'm apologizing to absolutely fucking nobody that it's Tuesday and I've yet to put a taco video up. As long as I get in all the entries that week, my readers (who have literally never said anything in six years about my update schedule) and I can give me a break.
  • Admin weekends will still be a thing–I'll just do five or six posts for that week, depending.
  • And if you want to never have fewer five or six post weeks, or even maybe get me up to eight or nine posts a week, with more obligations for fiction and "meaty posts," you are welcome to become a Patron and make sure I don't have to pet sit, teach summer school, double book, and always take shifts to make ends meet.
  • I'm totally going to double dip sometimes.

Image description:
Coffee mug with text- "If you
think writers like me should shut
up about politics and stick to writing."
Next......If you are following WAW and have (or are among the legions of who exist on WAW's FB page who definitely have) a sort of vaguely inflamed sense that you are entitled to an experience of hilarious, ineffable, absurdly-high-quality writing blog (*COUGH*) that is unsullied by all those nasty hobbit politickses, here is a heads up that this was never your prerogative and is about to be scoured like the shire. Crushed like a human skull in a Terminator movie future sequence. Shot down like an extra in a Star Wars battle. Killed like a red-shirted ensign on a planet with an unknown monster. Torn open from the inside out like the a-hole who is just in it for the money.....uh.....

Uh...

Well, you get the idea.

You see, while it is entirely possible, even likely, that as your eyes glazed over and you skimmed over the update bullet points above, you missed one teensy-weensy, but ever-so-crucial little, tiny detail. 

Image description: Back of mug above-
"A) Fuck you. B) You're wrong.
One of the things my Patrons requested more of almost across the board was more Social Justice Bard posts. 

To be honest, I'd been holding back. I'd like to be writing a lot more about these issues and it's one of the deepest wells of inspiration and almost daily topicality, and I had been second guessing myself a lot. Being a childhood abuse victim meant that the immediate social media backlash to those posts really took some getting used to.

Me: I took a macro from my page down because I think it might have perpetuated rape culture. 
SQiD: Verily, tis the greatest shame of the fascism of social justice thought when writers begin to censor themselves. Lo, this is a dark day indeed when you have succumbed to external forces to tell you what you should write.
Me: Nah, I wanted to take it down. I agreed once it was pointed out to me. But point taken. I should post more of my social justice thoughts on the blog instead of worrying about the backlash.
SQiD: *Nazgul scream*

Of course, adding a post or two a month with a particular focus won't actually matter to most people. Even folks who don't agree with everything I write often thank me for giving them something to think about. It is only those folks who out of their deep concern for my well being and analytics will advise me with what is of course the most well-intended counsel that my best move as someone who is doing [whatever they don't like] is to immediately cease and desist and go back to [the part they like.]

They're just looking out for me, you know.

For starters, it is impossible to not write somewhat politically. It simply can't be done when one considers what politics is. You're either questioning the status quo or you're supporting it, and while it might be unthinking your themes will reflect that. Unless you have a story with no conflict (which isn't a story) something political will be happening. Further, if your story (even allegorically) involves the conflict of man vs. society, you are absolutely writing politically.

"Politics" in the case of folks who want me to not "taint" my blog with them is being used as a placeholder for "social issues that don't affect me and that I don't want to think too much about." And to that I say, "QQ moar, n00b."

Even if I could somehow apolitically point out that the written word is the most powerful social force on Earth, I wouldn't want to do so in a way that keeps everyone sure there is nothing in their culture or upbringing that maybe they ought to consider contributes to the unfair world they see around them. Unfortunately, I'm not here to tuck people's cognitive dissonance into bed at night.

Sorry.


As you may have guessed, however, this guidance perhaps comes more from personal bias and an aggressive championship of the status quo than any keen insight into social media or audience interest. And much like shrugging as they suggest their genius insight into "what sells" .....which happens to match exactly with all their tastes......which happen to match exactly with the status quo, their insistence that 
SQiD: You're going to lose people like me, your once-faithful customers, if you fall down the long, dark hole into this social justice nonsense. It just ruins an otherwise good page, and we'll ALL just leave. One more ghost town tainted by social justice. It'll just be you in your little, tiny echo-chamber bubble talking to like six feminazis who already agree with you. 
Me: Actually, those posts regularly do better. I wouldn't have the audience I do without them. 
SQiD: Well that's just because...um....er....echo chamber....boilerplate....platitude.....bubble. AAAAAA*NAZGUL SCREAM*





*Look it was very big in 1987. Trust me.

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