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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, November 30, 2014

The New and Improved Update Schedule


After a month of trying the new schedule, and shaking out a few bugs out of it, Writing About Writing presents...

The New and Improved Update Schedule for 2015

Writing About Writing will post something every day. 

Every single day there will be something here. Sometimes it might be a few inspirational quotes or a great Youtube video about writing, or just a picture of me looking stressed out and screaming because life is coming on a little too strong to write a blog post about it. It might be nothing but a picture wishing you well for the holidays. But there will always be something here. I will even attempt to schedule a little something during vacations when I'm out of town in a place with no internet. So if you're the type who lies in bed, staring at the ceiling, your stomach roiling with hydrochloric acid and twisted into tight knots over the thought that a post may have passed you by, you might want to follow W.A.W. on one of the "always update," media.

However, most days will not be major articles. You won't "fall behind" if you miss a few days or come back to thirty pages if you don't keep up on the weekends.

I can't promise that nothing will ever go wrong, what with all the intergalactic invasions and evil mystery hackers and such that W.A.W. fields in a typical week, and I usually miss a couple of posts when I go to Burning Man but we will try.

I also invoke the "toddler excuse"!  I'm writing for two blogs, writing forty hours a week most weeks, teaching, and I'm the househusband for my family. There will come days when I look up a half a second too late, only to find that every piece of every board game we own is in a huge pile in the middle of the floor. That might be a day where I get my post up late in the evening or switch out a heavy day for an inspirational Youtube and a couple of funny writing macros.

And I'm not talking about a pile made up of the little hat from Monopoly
and some Hungry Hungry Hippo marbles here.
There is a monthly schedule I follow where I try to rotate in and out through the various running segments here on Writing About Writing. Even in a given month, you aren't likely to see something from each category, but it keeps me from doing fifteen listicles in a row and not writing a prompt for months on. I was going to post that schedule here but it'll be better to keep it in my head since anything I write will immediately become wrong the minute the schedule starts.



Here are a couple of things you can count on though:

Mon- Mailbox! On Monday I will usually run the mailbox. (Ask me anything about writing at chris.brecheen@gmail.com) This enormously popular segment runs weekly (partially because the questions inspire me, but mostly because it's enormously popular and I'm an unrepentant page view whore). As long as I have questions, I will do it every week. There is a non-zero chance that if I start getting more questions (and the finances of W.A.W. support more hours writing and fewer doing day jobs) that I'll bump up to twice a week.

Fri- On Fridays I usually put out a "meaty article" (as in heft not shitty erotica euphemism).

Tues-Thurs- Tuesday through Thursday depend heavily on what else is going on in my life. In theory, I would love to tell you that except for Wednesday, when I teach, I will put out a major article each other day. I would love to tell you that I will do this because I diligently used my time during the weekend to draft articles and didn't waste a moment of it. I would love to tell you that you can count on me to be regimented and disciplined with my time. Unfortunately it might be hard to tell you this, seeing as I will be trying to say it through the tears of laughter.

If there's been a run of passive aggressive sighs in the kitchen from Unsupportive Girlfriend or my weekend involved the words,"I'll just play this Bethesda game for an hour or two and then I'll totally be productive and get back to writing," Tuesday through Thursday might involve shorter articles or revisions or ongoing projects to clean up menus and tab.

Articles? How about these amazing
JAZZ FINGERS!!
Of course if you really want to hedge your bets for a good run of articles, a groupie threesome the weekend before will likely motivate me to write for hours, and turn into a week of exceptional productivity. No? Fair enough. Catch as catch can then.

Weekends: Generally, on the weekends, I'm working on whatever is going to go up the next week. Posts that go up on the weekend will usually either be a lighter fare or more of my "slow burn" articles. (That's an article that probably won't be popular at the time but picks up a steady trickle of traffic from search engines.) If you can't read W.A.W. on the weekends, you are probably not missing much, and it won't take you long to catch up.

In theory I will give you more than two solid articles a week, and some weeks it's four or five, but some weeks I'm hanging on to life like a cat caught in a screen door, and this new schedule is a little less overwhelming because I was falling behind in writing fiction and even reading. If I'm driven by current events, unfettered by chores for some reason, or simply exploding with inspiration, I will write more. If you're interested in more, high quality articles, the best thing you can do is to support W.A.W. so that I can work fewer hours of day job and spend more of them writing.

Or groupie threesomes. I really can't underscore enough how much that would work.

2 comments:

  1. I'm confused. At what point in the schedule do posts about new schedules fit? I'm sure there must have been some oversight. Such an essential item can't be left to chance ;D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, these days it's weekly, but I'm hoping to get it down to monthly eventually. :-p

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