I’ve been trying to write something for this blog for the past few days, because I’m about to upload another episode of The Modern World, and I thought it would look strange if the top part of my blog was nothing but podcast episodes. A couple of times in succession, I’ve finished my daily work, and then pulled up a blank text box only to find myself unable to concentrate on it and/or think of something worthwhile to put in it. I won’t call it writer’s block, because it’s not; I’ve been writing plenty, and working like mad, very creatively, not to mention that “writer’s block” is really a nonsense excuse anyway. A writer with “writer’s block” isn’t really a writer, since writing makes you a writer, not thinking about writing.

But anyway, that’s a tangent. The point is, I wanted to put something in this space, and haven’t been able to, and so I’m writing this, while my podcast exports itself from GarageBand, so that there can be something in this space.

I have had an idea of something to write, but it’s pretty scary (maybe it should be called “writer’s fright,” more like stage fright). For a long time, I’ve wanted to try a piece of episodic fiction. Charles Dickens, as you may know, wrote many of his books (including my favorite, A Tale of Two Cities) sequentially, with each chapter being published in a magazine or newspaper either weekly or monthly. That style of writing seems like a lot of fun: like a TV show, you have to keep everything super interesting, with lots of peaks and twists and turns. So I’ve been meaning to try and write something episodic and fun, like a medieval action story with each chapter being posted weekly or twice a week.

The problem, though, is that my fiction is bad. Really bad. I’m not a good fiction writer. I can get better — you can get better at anything with practice — but here’s the rub: the main reason I want to do episodic fiction is that I want feedback in the middle of the story. I want to see which characters people focus on, what lines people find interesting, and then I want to try and tailor my story in that direction. You can see that in Dickens’ work as well — he throws in characters that never worked out, and they disappear completely. While other characters end up being very popular (I believe the Artful Dodger of Oliver Twist was one), and they get a much bigger role in the story than originally planned. I like that kind of almost participatory fiction — except to that do that, I have to publish what I write every week.

Thus, my conundrum: if I can’t publish what I write, I won’t want to write it — it won’t hold interest for me (at least in terms of this episodic idea — I’m still working on other ideas separately). But if I do publish what I write, it’ll be bad. Gymnasts don’t practice in public, and that’s why you never see the gold medal winners fall.

Anyway, that’s what’s going through my head. What I need to do is just get over the “writer’s fright,” and start publishing stuff — get practicing and get rolling and get better. Even if it’s horrible (and it will be), it’s on this site: no one will read it anyway, right? So maybe someday in the next few weeks you’ll see my medieval action idea appear here.

And in the meantime, I’ve filled this space with text rather than links and formatting, and the podcast episode is now exported and done. Going to upload it now. Thanks for reading.