13 March 2015

Broken Promises

Currently pushing: Did the LA Times lift my idea for a publishing board game and make their version of it? Of course they did! I guess they added an interactive die and actually made a whole game so they win. So go ahead, try out How to Be a Writer.

Did I totally fail on my stated goal of blogging daily in March? Did I not even post once? Of course I did! In a hilarious attempt at resuscitating my writing habits, I figured I'd start from the beginning: blogging a lot. Instead I find myself digging through half written posts, Evernotes with mysterious phrases randomly scattered around, and trying to reconstruct things I was trying to talk about weeks ago.

The obvious solution is to just back date every attempted post from this month, because blogs are basically time travel. In related time travel news, watch Predestination. It’s not as good as say, Looper or Edge of Tomorrow, but it’s better than most. Plus, Ethan Hawke in sci-fi stuff is generally good. Evidence: Gattaca.

Advanced analytic stats on my blog: A high of 140 posts in 2009 to 23 posts in 2014. And then a whopping one post for the first three months of 2015. It's been a precipitous decline; I'm the Deron Williams of blogging.

So I think I’m going to put myself on a blogging schedule. Something I’ve never had to resort to. The mere idea of a schedule is anathema to me. But once I catch up on March, it’s onward with three posts a week. I mean, can I even call myself a writer if I can’t produce three sloppily written posts a week? Of course not right?

Also, I’ve been thinking of what the grace period is for when you should stop calling yourself a writer/author after your last book comes out. Number twelve on Simmons’ rules for being a true fan says that you can’t complain about your team for five years after they win a championship. I think that five year window is also a nice way to delineate when you're not an author anymore — this is in contrast to my ten year rule for things you used to do.

After those five years, you go from “I'm an author” to “I wrote a book once.” So basically, the clock is ticking. My last published thing was almost exactly a year ago so I have four years and counting to produce something else. Hurry Jon, hurry!

In the meantime, I bought this highly recommended Logitech Bluetooth Easy-Switch K811 keyboard at Guanghua Digital Plaza the other day to increase my mobile productivity. Of course, I don’t have an iPad to use it with yet, but this is how I do things. First a keyboard and iPad stand, then the actual iPad. Because backwards is forwards.