Contrary to your experience, I’ve been doing my fair share of writing. The reason it’s contrary to your experience is I also had to do some reorganizing, which isn’t my strong suit.
I’ve also decided to try writing a little slower. I’ve been cranking out so much that I’m having less fun. Writing should be fun, even if it’s a hard-workout exhausting kind of fun. I had a really pleasant conversation with a young person where I spoke about using fiction tropes in nonfiction writing.
Certainly, that’s not novel to me (and I told them as much) but I also had forgotten it a little bit. So I pulled a couple of the stories I’d intended to post and instead took my time with them. I think they’re improved for the effort, but it means my crank-it-out approach needs as much reorganization as this newsletter.
If you are subscribed to the podcast, you got to (had to?) hear my bit on Delmar. If not, don’t worry. It’s below.
Writing about Delmar, as I alluded to in the story, is fraught. Not only do I worry I’ll come off as a crank, but I also am reminded that I’m a crank shouting into the wind. It isn’t how I want to see myself, but it’s how I am when I’m in that headspace.
I like to think that it’s OK because I know I’m kidding myself, but there’s danger in that admission. It’s the kind of excuse that feels like the first step toward complete delusion.
Anyway, I moved all the Delmar stuff to a separate section (see above). It’s all still the same newsletter, but I won’t feel like I’m bothering you with my petty, snarky Delmar prose.
I often feel oversubscribed to emails and don’t get to all the ones I want to. Rather than burden you as I start firing off a lot more, I’m going to send roundups with links.
Along those lines, I’ve also added “Return to Sender” as a separate section and podcast.
If you’re not familiar with it, Return to Sender is a series wherein I research postcards from a batch I bought on eBay. Some of the postcards are already filled out, so I send them back to the original address to see whether I can get in touch with the senders or their families (a lot of the postcards are from the early 20th century).
I’m having a lot of fun with it. I’ve done one video and a couple of posts. Here’s the latest of those:
I’ve also turned it into a podcast, which you can follow here (or below).