Ink Raindrops: It’s Time For a Few Small Repairs, She Said

Pardon the Shawn Colvin lyric, but I’ve always liked the song.

As you’ve probably noticed, I haven’t updated IR for October. I made a post to Facebook late in the month noting that I’d come down with an awful cold, and that I’d be late, but I never intended to be this late. I’ve also continued to miss Poetic Magnetism updates. This cold, I note, has been the result of several little surprises in my life that I didn’t see coming, and the stress I’ve been facing over them. If I’m ever going to be a real writer, I have to learn to deal with this stuff better, but I’m still learning. Putting it all out of my head is still difficult, particularly in such personal and familial contexts.

Now it is the 10th of October, I have this month’s AND last month’s chapters to write, plus the extra backlog of chapters I will need for the months when I don’t post here. And NaNoWriMo 2011 is right around the corner. And I still have some editing left to do on my Clarion Write-A-Thon script from August. I hope it doesn’t sound whiny, but I’m tired, guys. I’ve been to hell and back over the last few months, and I’m just starting to breathe again.

This, combined with the continued realization that Ink Raindrops just isn’t getting the readership it needs to function at its best, has made me think seriously about what I’m doing here. I spend a lot of time on IR stuff, and I had hoped by now that word of mouth and Internet traffic might have brought a few more people my way. It hasn’t happened. And I just don’t have the interest to spend time, money and effort trying to market it – this has been my practice place, not something that I wanted to make my life. In the past I have had writing sites that were fortunate enough to get noticed, but it hasn’t happened yet, this time. Still, it is good for me, and I’ve grown a lot as a writer by having this here. I don’t want to give up.

So here’s what’s going to happen. Ink Raindrops will stay open, but with a few alterations:

For the time being, I’m going to remove the poll feature and add chapters at my own discretion. It was a cool idea and I still think it has merit, but it really does require more than two or three voters per month to make sense. I thank those of you that did vote from the bottom of my heart, and you’ll still get to read what I’m writing this way. Bug me via Facebook or Twitter or email if you have strong feelings about what you want to see next!

The other big change is that I’d like to, for right now, end the commitment to monthly chapters. This one hurts, honestly, because I believe I benefit from having that deadline – it’s taught me a lot about how to work on a real schedule, and I’d like to re-establish that someday, if I can. But right now, going into the period of my life where I’m not going to be here anyway, I have to face reality.

I’ve gotten delayed in doing some things that I need and want to get done, and I’m about to lose even more time to NaNoWriMo. Right now it is a choice between Ink Raindrops monthlies, and NaNo. I love the work I’ve been doing here, but NaNo means a whole lot to me – I get more accomplished, even though it’s harder work, and it’s a community of writers that I only get to take part in once a year. For once, I’d like to have the time to enjoy that. I’ve already done Clarion this year, which was another huge challenge, and it’s things like this that force me into working on the things I really need to improve. IR is for fun and practice; Clarion and NaNo are craft-builders. I need the latter right now more than ever.

So, I’ll still work on these stories when I have time. I don’t know how often to tell you to expect updates; I will let you know via Facebook and Twitter when they happen, so you don’t need to check often. Because I still owe you a chapter of The End, I’ll make that first priority, but after that, I’ll start doing author’s choice, as mentioned. I’m not going to shut anything down or stop writing them, I promise. I want to see where they go as much as you do!

This will remain my portfolio, of sorts, as time passes. If you want to share my work with others, please don’t hesitate to do so. It just won’t be as social an experience as I hoped to make it. After the new year, when I have more time to devote to things, maybe we can talk about re-establishing the monthly deadline or trying something new, but for now, something has to give, and I’m picking IR.

Thanks to those of you that are still with me, and those that have been with me since the beginning. I promise I won’t let you down, and I’m certainly not giving up on anything. I’ve just finally been forced to admit that I’m spreading myself too thin, and it’s time to learn how to prioritize tasks. I’ll let you know what happens next, and when new things arrive. The rest – we’ll have to see. In time.