According to my WordPress dashboard, this is the 1,000th post on this blog. I was going to hold off and do something big and momentous for the occasion, but then I figured it would be better to do a quick footnote and get on with the regular program.
Nine hundred ninety nine blog posts ago, I was a college student at BYU who had just decided to write my first novel instead of a massive Final Fantasy VI fanfic. The year was 2007, I had a bunch of unfinished novels and stories left over from high school, but I’d never actually finished anything. I started this blog so that my writing friends could keep me honest.
If I could have seen myself now, I probably would have thought that I’m crazy (I think I got those verb tenses right…). Back in 2007, writing was still a hobby. I had dreams of turning it into something a little bit more, but I never intended to try and make it my full time career–though if you’d asked me what I wanted to do for a career, I couldn’t have given you an answer.
A thousand blog posts from now, where will I be? Married, probably, with a couple of kids (or at least one on the way). Hopefully by then, I’ll have turned this writing dream into a full time career–heck, I’m not all that far from making it happen right now.
The 2013 me hopes that I’ll be living somewhere exotic, having an extended overseas adventure with my lovely wife. But the truth is that I’ll probably be settled down somewhere, trying to pay off a house and raise a family the responsible way. If that’s the case, I’ll probably look back on my 2013 self and think he’s crazy.
But hey, who knows what the future will bring?
One thing that’s almost certainly true is that I’ll still be blogging. I don’t just blog to promote my books, or to build my “platform” (oh how I hate that word), or anything slimy like that. I’ve been blogging since before I decided to turn this writing thing into a career, and I keep on doing it because I love doing it. Because really, how in the heck can you get to a thousand of anything without loving it?
On that note, I should add that I’ve signed up for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge for the month of April. Every day (except Sundays), I’ll do a post that starts with a different letter of the alphabet, starting at A and going down to Z. My theme is going to be things I love about science fiction and fantasy, and it’s going to include a number of common tropes. It’s going to be fun!
So yeah, here’s to the first thousand posts on this blog. It certainly won’t be the last! 🙂
I think it’s funny you hate the word platform. I hate the phrase social media. I hate the word schadenfreude, because i think it’s so obscure, and so ridiculous to say, that the meaning of the word is outweighed by its pretentious obscurity.
Heh, that’s funny. I should do a blog post sometime on words we hate. I also hate the word “plethora,” because there really isn’t any way you can say it without sounding pretentious.
But “platform” is horrible because it’s one of those sleazy marketing terms that newbies love to throw around. All it really means is that your fanbase is large enough that a publisher can expect to earn back any money they throw at you, but people throw the term around as if it’s the be-all end-all of their marketing efforts. Ugh.
I mean, when was the last time you bought a book from an author because they had a really good “platform”? “Oh hey, I really like Stephen King’s books, he’s got such a huge platform.” “That J.K. Rowling just blew me away with how magnificent her platform is.” “Isaac Asimov, man. He’s got more platform than any other science fiction writer I’ve read (except maybe Heinlein or Clarke).”
NO.
1,000 posts! Wow! I’ve just gotten to a 100. I came over from the A to Z challenge, so I’m looking forward to reading your posts in April 🙂
Hey thanks! It’s going to be crazy keeping that schedule for the whole month, but it’s also going to be fun.