Matthew Wayne Selznick

It’s been two months since I’ve posted anything to Scribtotum. Two or three of you might be wondering… wtf?

I guess the simplest thing I can say is that I’m still recognizing patterns in my creativity, even now, edging toward forty-one. I need to make stuff — I get a little wonky if I’m not being creative. Thing is, my creativity doesn’t strongly manifest in any one endeavor. Sure, I mostly write, and now and then write music. But I also find fulfillment in things that don’t have an obvious end result that’s consumable by others. Things like world-building, plotting, and tinkering with web sites.

My strongest creative focus in the last two months has been working on making a new mattselznick.com. This has been done in fits and starts, and is now mostly done. Take a gander at the forum post (hey, there are forums now!) for details on that. It’s been a little frustrating, but it did scratch that particular creative itch.

How do I know this? Over the last couple weeks, I’ve had an increasing urge to create in other ways.

I’ve missed posting to this blog — a couple of things have happened in the last two months that I’m eager to write about, and I’ll be commenting on them after the fact. I’ve missed playing brain-tag with my hypothetical readers. So I’m blogging again, and (probably) more often than before.

I’m also beginning to think about the characters in “Pilgrimage” again. I want to dive back into that book, and others. I still have my goal of 200,000 words written in 2008, and I still believe that’s achievable. Finishing “Pilgrimage” will be a decent chunk of that, and my mind is buzzing with the urge to dive into other, non-Sovereign Era projects, too.

Finally, I have an urge to podcast again. I went on a voluntary hiatus from podcasting in October of 2007 — the original intent was to not podcast until “Pilgrimage” was finished. One thing I’ve learned in the last six months or so is that arbitrary restrictions on how and why I make stuff is counter-productive. I’m not entirely sure, but I have a suspicion that doing so actually causes me to rebel against myself on a semi-conscious level. I’ve learned that the best thing I can do for my creative health is express myself when and how I want, without fretting over external pressures or self-imposed attempts to corral myself into doing one thing or another. So podcasting is coming back, with “one podcast to rule them all,” Sonitotum. I’m hoping to post an episode this weekend where I’ll talk about what that means.

I hope everyone will come along for the ride. Subscribe to Scribtotum, this blog. Subscribe to Sonitotum, the podcast. Register on this site, leave comments when I post, and participate in the forums. I’m looking forward to talking with all of you again.