I continue exploring what the publishing aspect of Free Refills should look like going forward.
I continue to believe in the value of having something in front of people every day. I like the idea of people checking in to FR as part of their easing-in-to-work every day as they sit down at their desk. I have a few sites like that myself.
On the other hand, I had an interesting conversation with my friend Kari a few weeks ago, in which she said she checks in to Free Refills only every so often, because she prefers to binge-read a bunch of pieces all at once. And that struck me as interesting, because…well, because I like reading that way too. And I like writing that way–longer pieces, or collections of pieces that make sense together.
The problem is that those two things–having something in front of people every day, and having the kind of material that someone would choose to binge-read–are, while not exactly orthogonal, not exactly complementary either. So how do I manage that? And, let’s not forget, a substantial part of the point of what I’m doing here is to help myself make a living.
From these perspectives, the question of, “What is the goal for a given piece?” becomes more crucial and, at least as I’ve gone about things so far, less clear. I have to admit that the only overarching theme I see connecting my pieces here is that they exist; my main goal with what I’ve been publishing has been to try to write things that (a) I might find compelling as a reader; (b) are of sufficient quality that I can stand behind them; (c) I can get published by my deadline without too much struggle.
For what Free Refills has been so far, making publishing into a practice, in order to get things out there and overcome my perfectionism, has been enough of a reason to keep doing what I’ve been doing. I have to call it a successful practice, too. No matter how much I’ve wanted to avoid dealing with the writing on a given day, I have never missed a deadline.
On the other hand, I’ve been saying for about a year now that it’s time to change the approach. Now, it’s good that I haven’t used that things need to change as an excuse for backsliding. That would be a very bad outcome. But the publishing practice as I currently practice it has just about run its course.