So I’m still waffling about what to do with this blog.
I don’t want my stuff lifted. It’s not Annie Dillard, but I am a professional writer, and I do work hard enough on it to value it. And I don’t want to waste any more brain cells even thinking about whether or not it will be. My life is complicated enough as it is.
I hear Paulo Coelho “secretly” leaked pieces of a novel in order to create buzz, and I say good on Paulo Coelho, but I don’t have the kind of visibility in the publishing world to make that worth my while. I also know someone is still reading this blog, in spite of the fact that all I’ve done for over a week is complain about not being able to blog anymore, and I want to thank each and every one of you crazy nuts willing to read nothing but complaining. But I don’t kid myself I’ll keep your attention with that indefinitely (although it seems to work for John Scalzi).
I’ve talked to my sys admin about turning this blog into a more conventional site for posting events, calls for submissions, links to good articles about writing, and stuff like that. Stuff I don’t care if anyone reposts because it doesn’t belong to me, anyway.
BUT I LIKE WRITING ESSAYS ABOUT FICTION.
So we’re also talking about creating a separate site where I can continue writing the essays. The catch: I’d only allow access to those folks I personally trust not to lift crap from it.
I’ve got a handful of clients and contributing commentors in mind. And anyone could send me email and apply. I’d probably have some kind of Rorschat test to put them through, proving they are not the type to lie to my face and then lift my crap anyway. Writing fiction has a lot to do with understanding psychology, and I get a bang out of that stuff. Maybe I’d insist on reading their tarot cards or something.
Or I could charge. People who lift tend to be both lazy and cheapskates. And if everyone on my RSS feed made a one-time contribution, I might be able to pay some bills! That’d be a plus.
But what do you guys think? Is there an option I’m missing here? A really nifty solution? Some level of creativity I have failed to attain?
We don’t have to decide tonight—my sys admin is out of town, anyway, eating great sushi and drinking great mai-tais in an expense-account hotel somewhere in Silicon Valley without me.
But I can’t really keep promoting this site until I figure out what I’m promoting and whom to. And I do feel like I should get off my duff and make some decisions about all this some time pretty soon.