Resolutions on Writing

Around 2013, I decided to try a few therapeutic writing exercises, and got hooked. Since then I’ve written a lot for fun, though almost entirely pseudonymously.

I’ve written poems off and on at HelloPoetry.com, and variously sized “flash fiction” at Jottify.com (the site shut down some time ago), and for a while posted snippets and rants on Tumblr. All of this was under some made up name; I don’t think I could’ve ever written anything under my real name.

About a year and a half ago, I started writing (and still do) one rambling bag of seven hundred and fifty words (inspired by 750words.com). Of course, this isn’t shared either, just written and thrown away, which is really the whole point.

I did want to push myself to write more under my own name, but this seemed (1) scary, and (2) pointless. Eventually I started the habit of monthly posts, a kind of “curation” attempt.

Right now there are two of these: one focussed on topics relevant to programming or math or science, etc., and one for everything else. The distinction is a bit silly, but it sort of makes sense, and I’ll keep it that way.

I also write once a month on stuff that happened in my life — this avoids the tendency to post frequent status updates, but, eh, I won’t say anything more about that.

It takes me a while to get to the point, and I’ve buried the lede here. My resolution for next year is to write more frequently, and share more of what I write, though exactly what form that takes, I’m not sure.

Most of what I have to say about the world in general ends up being either unnecessarily controversial, or completely boring. So I don’t want to write long blog posts about that. Perhaps I’ll just share more random snippets that I’ve collected over time, with some commentary. Or perhaps the solution is to weave it into less-frequent long-form writing. Dunno.

Some of this has been brought on by NaNoWriMo being round the corner, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to kill it, but I’m sure going to try. Last year I ended up writing something small and very weird; this time I’m hoping to write something more normal … we’ll see.