Up until (relatively) recently I was working on two major blogging projects. In one I was watching a different movie from a different country every other week. In the other I was working my way through Amazon’s list of “100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime.”

While I got a lot out of these posts, and worked on them for quite a while, they did eventually start to eat up more and more time and I started questioning if they were really what I wanted to do with this space.

One day I was talking to my wife about this, and she asked me, “Are these projects really helping you reach your goal of being a published novelist?” I considered this for a while and realized the answer was “no.”

For a while I considered scaling back, making the posts shorter and posting them less often but I still wouldn’t be doing what I want to do with this blog.

So I have cut them off completely. I don’t feel entirely comfortable with this. I’m typically much better about seeing a project through to the end, but they simply weren’t worth the time or energy.

So what am I doing going forward? For the past few weeks I have been writing posts on advice I have picked up as to how to be a better writer and posting it every other week. I’m trying to give advice/guidance that is off the beaten path and specific to my own experiences. So far the posts have come out much easier and I feel that there is an improvement in quality. Also, it helps me personally to put my thoughts about writing into words. During my “off” weeks I’m going to post links to publications that are currently open to submissions in order to help my fellow aspiring writers find places where their work will appear.

While these new goals are less “gimicky,” they do feel like the right move and they are much closer to embodying what I want this website to be.

Thank you everyone for following along on this journey!