Phase Four

As I noted at the time of this blog's belated first anniversary, it has gone through a lot of changes. I established it on a whim, having no purpose except a vague desire to start writing regularly. For some time, my commitment to it was half-hearted, sometimes posting half a dozen entries in a day and sometimes going a month or two without a word. Seldom were any of them of much substance. In terms of focus, the blog could have taken a lesson from a shotgun. In short, the blog was not much to speak of.

The first evolution was consistent frequency. I figured that even more essential to establishing a fan base than being any good was being reliable. I finally began to live up to my original intent, and began publishing every day. I started by ceasing to post multiple times in a given day. Where I would have posted all the results of such fits of productivity at once, I now began to post one and hold the excess in reserve. That way, when my best efforts at sticking to a routine of writing every day failed due to lack of ideas or energy, I had something to publish anyway. This became necessary only on rare occasions, as the act of writing soon became as automatic as reading always had been.

With the second evolution, I sought to set some minimum standards of quality, and did my best to stick to them. Prior to that, good and bad writing went up rather indiscriminately. Some posts would be just a few words, and others would be a couple thousand. Some would be dreadful, and others something I was fairly proud of. I would now settle for nothing less than a decent, meaty post every day. Meeting that goal became a lot easier as a consequence of the first evolution. The pressure to write something lessened considerably when it was stopped going live on the blog the following day and started going into a queue two weeks long.

The third evolution was a kind of purification of the blog's content. I was posting amusing pictures, quoting songs and ranking good looking women. A bit of wisdom came to me from a great comedian who had gone through something similar. He had been an extremely accomplished impressionist, but finally decided that what he was telling the audience with his impressions was that the targeted people were worth watching, and he wasn't, so he started over with an act that was pure self-expression. After reading that, I felt likewise. Every other blog and website on the internet was devoted to something other than me. Why should my blog follow suit instead of being devoted exclusively to me and my voice? I kept my grandfather's painting and the links to the work of my friends, but flushed out all third-party content driving the blog.

Now we come to the fourth evolution. I didn't want to start writing for nothing. As much as I want this blog to be a success, it began as a means to an end, and remains one. I want to write professionally. There are a lot of things I want to do with my life in addition, but one that looms large is to join men like Mark Twain, Charles Bukowski, Steve Martin and others. For that reason, the object of all writing that appears on this blog will be submission to be published in reputable print and online outlets.

After I get into the habit of regularly submitting, unless I say otherwise, it may be assumed that all content you read here has been rejected by one or more such publications. Probably everything will be rejected, and nothing will particularly change here on the blog. Should anything be accepted, I shall only publish it here if the terms of submission for the publication I wrote it for so permit. If they don't, I shall direct the attention of readers to the place where the piece may be read. Now, if you don't mind, there are  circular filing cabinets in submissions offices around the world badly in need of my work.