I Return!

For the last 10 days or so, I've taken a short hiatus from my daily writings in this blog.  This is mostly due to a number of factors in my life, from having a whole bunch of things going on in my personal life to burnout from writing every day to even having some confidence issues with regard to where this endeavor currently stands.  While I'm glad to be back, I think it's important that I touch on at least a few of these issues.

Those of you who have stuck with me these last few months know how proud I am of how much I've written in the Comics Cove.  From my first post, I made it clear that I was afraid this could be one of those efforts that get started and never get off the ground, that this might turn out to be a blog that gets started and then soon abandoned just because I can't think of anything to write about, or I can't keep the motivation going to write.  Clearly, that has not happened, and I couldn't be more pleased with how much I've written about comics in the time since late 2011.

The last few weeks, however, have been especially taxing for me.  Balancing the time to work, write, relax, and still meet the multitude of responsibilities I have in my personal life has really become difficult with the onset of the summer season.  With everything going on, writing ahead became impossible--I was writing up against a daily wall for much longer than I'll ever admit--and even keeping a daily essay up proved too taxing to maintain.  I am a little disappointed that I won't have written for a full year everyday, but I think if I hadn't taken a break, I simply would have burned out in some vital area of my life, and I wasn't willing to sacrifice any of that, most especially my desire to write.

Things haven't gotten much easier in the adjoining time off, and I'm pretty sure I won't be starting any more grand writing streaks any time soon here.  But I have kept reading comics, and having opinions about the storylines I uncover, so you can safely expect some more reviews and musings in the near future.

With that said, I will probably be taking a more casual approach to this blog, at least in terms of my frequency.  This is for several reasons, including the aforementioned danger of burnout.  Some of the others, however, are more personal.

As I've mentioned before, I'm very happy with my work on the Cove.  It is far and away the longest and most well-maintained blog I've ever undertaken.  And my enjoyment of comics in all forms has led me to keep it going for so much longer than any of my other efforts.  It seems as long as I had a good topic, that I was interested and passionate about, then I would have no shortage of things to post.  And it has been so liberating to discover that firsthand.

But something has changed.

I'm a decent writer, I think.  And I've wanted to be a writer since I was little.  But my first love has always been in fiction, and creating worlds, plots, and characters for people to read about and fall in love with.  And I have done very little fiction writing since I started the Cove.

Don't get me wrong; my output before the Cove wasn't exactly stellar, either.  But with the Cove, I've at least established that consistent writing is an attainable possibility for me.  I know I can do it, but lately it feels like I've been hiding behind the shield of all this creative nonfiction because it's easy for me to choose a topic and go.  I need to stretch my creative muscles more, and take that consistent writing of which I'm capable and try to make it work for the writing of which I'm presumably supposed to be doing more.

What this will all entail isn't exactly clear to me at present.  It may well mean fewer posts in the Cove, but I can't promise it will translate into more posts on my fiction blog, A Glimpse Through the Door.  I'll probably be a lot more miserly with showing off my fiction, as I'm less confident in my ability to write it than I am about my output on the Cove.  Scripts, too.  We'll see.

I do think this is the right direction to go, though.  In listening to Neil Gaiman's recent commencement address, I've come to realize that I have to take the steps that feel like progress towards my goal of being a writer.  I have to walk toward the mountain, as it were.  And this feels like a step in the right direction.  I will walk that path for a while, and hopefully I can share with you how it goes.  In the mean time, wish me luck, keep your readers tuned to this blog, and I promise you'll hear more from me here in the near future.