One Year Later…

Reading Time: 4 Mins

Well here we are, one year into this new writing journey, and if you are reading these words you are a part of it, so thank you.

Whether you followed a link on twitter, have this blog bookmarked and check it daily (and are disappointed 59 days out of 60) or were forwarded the link by a friend’s aunt over email with the subject line “FWD: FWD: FWD: >>> READ THIS FOR SIX YEARS OF GOOD LUCK”, I appreciate that you are here.

Some observations from the last 365 days:

• It is much easier to write a novel while unemployed vs. being employed
• If I write 280 characters a day on a writing prompt that seems to satisfy the “but have I written today?” part of my brain
• People enjoy bullet point lists in blogs and social media
• It makes them feel productive with their reading
• But only if the list has five points or more; any less and they feel cheated

I opened up my WIP for the first time in 2023 last weekend and a moth flew out of my laptop monitor.

I have over 51 343 words written and I am now stuck with the question of do I go back and read and edit everything or do I follow my “next chapter notes” from last November and just continue writing as if no time has passed? I have my chapter outline of everything I’ve written and the next five chapters mapped out, my concern is that my tone may have shifted. I am not the person now I was in November.

Seriously, real question. Comments appreciated.

On the social media side of everything I flirted with being a #bookstagrammer and posted quotes from books I’ve read but I felt a little pompous and it didn’t feel like I was being me. Instagram remains the twice-monthly place where I post a picture of where I am or what I’ve eaten, if I even remember to take a picture.

Twitter, despite all the drama the past few months with Mr. Skynet-in-human-form taking the reigns, remains my platform of choice for my writing. The immediacy and connectivity is still there and, fortunately, I was never one to trust algorithms to dictate my feeds and always kept a list of my favourites, so I haven’t lost too many connections as funky as things have gotten.

Fun fact: it just took me three tries to spell algorithm correctly.

Funner fact: after starting out with just 78 followers after my twitter cleanup a year ago, I passed 3000 at the start of this month.

Funnest fact: I accept the word fun as an adjective and not as a noun only; if this offends you, please accept the possibility that you, yourself, may not be fun.

At this point I whisper: If your response to the above is “Hey, I’m fun!” then welcome to the adjective-side and congratulations on unlocking the word “funner” within your own vocabulary.

Point being, 3000 is a lot of people after a year and I’m happy to have reached so many without having to resort to littering every tweet with 30 hashtags and bait questions like “So what’s your favourite hour in the day?” or “Who is your Batman?”

For the record, the answers are: 9:30-10:30 p.m. and Keaton, always.

My twitter approach, I feel, and I hope this has come across as such, has been built on genuine connections and sharing. I make an effort to write well each day and put my best into my #vss365 tweets. Of course, some days one’s best is not that great, but I feel I’ve had a certain level of consistency that has been appreciated. I thank all of you who are regular readers, writers and commenters; the engagement means a lot to me. Not in a “counting likes and release of endorphins kind of way”, which I’m sure does play a small part, but more in a big picture sense; it’s meaningful to me to know that, small as it may be right now, there is an audience out there for what I might want to write.

It’s much easier to want to finish the novel, or try to get the other two published, knowing that an audience does exist.

I read other vssers voraciously, I like liberally and I retweet my favourite three each day, generally giving preference to fellow writers without tens of thousands of followers should there be a tie.

I am torn about retweeting more. When I visit another writer’s feed for the first time, I personally don’t like to have to scroll for hours until I read their own words, so I want to ensure that others don’t have to do that with me. I’d like to be judged follow-worthy by my own words as well as the company I keep. I’m curious to hear the thoughts of those who retweet much more often than they tweet. Again, comments are open.

Ultimately, all of this is to say, thank you for reading and being part of my journey over the last year.

If you’ve read this far down, I appreciate you.

And, hopefully it goes without saying, if you’ve read this far down, you shouldn’t worry; I believe you are probably a very fun person indeed.