One Year Down

Looking Back 

It's been a year since I launched this site, just before I published The Fall and Rise of @TheRealJoyG and dragged my indie-publisher hat back out, dusted it off, and said "right, what's changed since 2012?" Answer: quite a bit and also not so much.

Quite a bit: social media and self-promotion are entirely different now, shifting from communities to commodities. We're enmired in the rise in generative AI technologies, and the costs to creativity, the environment, and human creativity. The big names have gotten bigger and the indies and the small names are feeling the squeeze.

Not so much: The craft of writing is still a craft, no matter how mechanized or machine-masticated it may be. I'm hopeful for the pushback against the Slop era. The best way to create is to still pick up a pen, or a brush, or a camera, or an instrument and try. Striving, failing, succeeding and growing haven't changed. This has never been easy.

Looking Ahead

I'm still at odds with the Algorithm and all its broken promises. I'm focusing on output more than engagement and trying to wrap up the three (!) books I have in the air right now: two drafted, one being drafted, and all in need of my attention. I'm still engaged with our weekly writing class, and our out-of-class weekly writing group with informal gatherings at the local library (support your local library, everyone.)

I am planning to put more into the site, trying to put some more there there. This blog still does respectable traffic, which I hadn't expected last year when firing up the whole thing. I was certain that blogging, like most other things, was a quaint artifact of the past two decaded, ne'er to return again. But I've never been good at detecting when the ways of the past become the trends of the future. True to my rhino nature, I'll just keep plodding along and doing my thing, one myopic footstep in front of another, and know that I'll get to destinations at my own pace.

 Thanks for walking with me, these past twelve months. Keep your creative momentum going.

🧩🦏 

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