I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to communicate with you, and how I can refine and improve the effort in the limited time available to do so.
I’ve been thinking about how I can be most effective achieving what’s most important.
With these concerns front-of-mind, I reevaluated my commitment to consistently releasing episodes of my podcast, Sonitotum. I revealed the results of that exercise in Sonitotum episode 106 on September 19, 2024, which was cross-posted as a Scribtotum article.
Around the same time, I saw a little swell of conversation in my social networking circles discussing, rather wistfully, the golden age of blogging. Folks, as they periodically do, bemoaned the death of the medium.
Of course, blogging isn’t dead, any more than email, video, or, indeed, podcasting, which have all received their burn notices time and again.
Not Drowning, Waving
It got me thinking about the fifty-two(!) blogs to which I subscribe. For me, blogging is alive and well.
And yet, I barely blog. When I do, it’s a Big Deal: 2,100 words each, on average, this year. Since they are such massive missives, they take a good chunk of days to write… and so, I don’t do it all that often. Just four posts in 2024.
In that same time… I can’t even imagine how many times I’ve posted on social media. I’m sure as hell not going to take the time to dig around and try to find out.
All those social media posts are, as the replicant once said, like tears in the rain. Sure, I know they’re indexed and live on the web functionally forever, but… not in any way that matters all that much, right?
Skipping Stones and Throwing Bottles
What if I were to… indeed, why not… create smaller, more frequent, blog posts every time I find myself engaged in an, if you will, threaded conversation on a social network?
Blogs were, some of you might remember, a social network before there were social networks. It was called “the blogosphere.”
Thing is? It still exists, but not as tightly linked together as it once was. Each blog is, to borrow from Nabil Maynard, an isle, but they need not be isolated. Warren Ellis brought me the concept of blogs as an archipelago, and the image has stuck with me for five years… each blog one not so far apart; within shouting distance; a short trip under a good wind.
The wind — and now, to be clear, this torturous extension of the metaphor is all mine — is how actively one participates.
I’d like to be part of that again.
Moar Blogging!
So! Expect to see much more frequent posts to Scribtotum. Expect these posts to be (usually) shorter. Expect what I write to come from a place of experience and expertise (not the same thing!) and expect an opinion, and a point of view.
Which is to say, expect a read of what’s on my mind, and what makes that mind. As often and in as many ways as possible, expect posts focused on providing value to writers, authors, and other creators, especially those of us who do it ourselves.
How To Stay Connected with This Blog
I hope you’ll read along. There are many different blog reader apps available for your phone, mobile device, or computer. I run Miniflux on my own server, but that’s getting my hands dirtier than most folks will want to do, so I can recommend the Inoreader news reader for Android, iOS, and the web. I used it for many years before going the DIY route with Miniflux.
Once you’ve joined up and downloaded Inoreader, add https://www.mattselznick.com/scribtotum/feed/ and you’ll get each new Scribtotum article as soon as it’s available.
Also, of course, if you become a member of the Multiversalists community of readers, writers, friends, and fans, even at the free level, I’ll send you a weekly digest of posts for you to catch up on. Don’t forget: when you join for free, you also get your choice of one of three of my e-books… for (say it with me) free!
Feature image courtesy of LuxTonnerre under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.