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.