Alright, that’s it. “Patchwork Epistemologies” is finished.
Dissatisfied? Me too, but hopefully different threads will be picked up here and there later and re(de)fined.
I got the distinct impression halfway through that I had bitten off more than I could chew. Whilst breaking up my post into six parts might have helped alleviate a few months of constipation, I’m not sure it helped the consistency or flow of the series. [Believe it or not, this was not actually intended to be a diarrhea innuendo. Get your mind out the gutter.]
Anyway, either way, it’s over — and I promised myself that once I got that series out the way I’d take a break from the blog.
I’ve told people I’m going to take a break a bunch of times on this blog before, mostly due to burn-out or writer’s block but it’s never lasted more than a few days. I’m an over-sensitive soul. Give me a couple of dull days without inspiration to write or make something and I start to question if life is even worth living. Melodramatic, I know, but it’s unfortunately the sad truth. Please take pity on my long-suffering girlfriend.
I have a disease, you see. It’s called “blogger’s presenteeism”… It’s real, I swear it. I get so insecure about the prospect of inactivity on this blog it is embarrassing. It makes me disproportionately stressed. There’s too much of my self-esteem wrap up in this stupid WordPress. It’s completely trapped in there. I just feed the host when I can.
This break isn’t depressive, however. In fact, I’m reluctant to even do it at all — which is precisely why it feels like a good thing to do at this point…? Divert the energy I do have into something I should actually be doing, rather than getting caught up on a dozen other flights of fancy.
So, this is me officially taking a leaf out of Ed Berger’s book-writing book. It’s going to be a vague attempt at self-discipline and putting my productivity towards something I won’t be sticking online straight away.
(I’ll still be on Twitter though.)
I promised that my “Egress” book would be out back in December and now it’s February and I’m only deeper into a swamp with it. Over the last few days, however, I managed to do a fair bit of untangling and now, chapters 0 through to 5 have a nice, smooth-ish trajectory. 6 and 7 need a lot of work, however.
Considering how big it has gotten — about 50,000 words — I can’t afford to self-publish it as I’d initially planned too but, considering its a pretty substantial thing by this point, I don’t feel so bad about attempts to give it the best life that I can. So, rather than take out a loan on it and increase my debt like an idiot, I’m going to finish this manuscript and pitch it to some publishing peeps I like instead.
I am going to swear to myself that I won’t be around here until it’s finished.
Maybe that means I’ll race through it and I’ll be back in a week or two. Maybe it’ll be worse than I anticipate and it’ll take me much longer to get my house in order… I hope it’s the former…
At this point, I’m really just tying up its loose ends and making sure all the sections flow together into a nice reading experience. The words are (mostly) all there. It just needs a reshuffle. (I say this with caution, of course — last time I said that in public I gained three new chapters.)
So, wish me luck. I’ll be back.
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