Jeremy C Kester

This is a bit of the update to follow-up on the last post on this site. Much was stated in that post on my issues in dealing with fears and other traits I have that lead to derailing my creative projects and desires. That work of course will be long and take lots of time and effort. Either way, I need to keep pushing the effort into working creatively.

Moving forward requires me to think a little more about what it is I want to do rather than what I want to be. I wish to be a successful writer, but dwelling on that without any action plan is ridiculous. In other words, wishing for an outcome is futile if it is not at the very least tied to an action. Adding on to that, it is smarter to love the process rather than caring about the outcome. That means that if you want to be a writer and only care about the end result… it means that you aren’t really a writer.

Something I am trying to learn myself — or remember — is that I want to be a writer because writing is meaningful to me. I write because I love writing, and even if no one reads it, I’ll still write. It’s the process.

Anyway, before I go too far on that tangent, what I am trying to say is that I want to start seeing what I can do that satisfies both the act of writing and marketing in a way that I would enjoy doing. And my site (aka blog) is the perfect place to try.

I am resurrecting two things: posting a weekly poem on Wednesdays and Free Fiction Fridays. Their execution won’t be perfect — at least at first. I’ll be experimenting on FFF more too, posting anything from full short stories, chapters of published work, and maybe small passages of a part of something out there or in progress. Basically, FFF is not going to necessarily be a weekly full short story like it once was. Poetry is self-explanatory… one free poem a week of my own.

To add to that, I want to work on getting at least one post up a week. This one counts as the start. I also have 8 more planned at this time, 2 written and 6 in progress. Maybe I might go to two a week. Or more. (Daily feels too much, but if it evolves back into that, so be it.) What those posts are will vary for a little while until I settle on a group of topics that I actually want to write about regularly. Politics might come into play, but given how it often exhausts and angers me, that could be short-lived.

The writing itself has to resume on a regular basis. Structure and goals have to return. It used to be that I targeted 1,000 words each day of fiction. It may be a good goal to resume for the time being. But along with that, there are other tasks I should be doing more regularly such as outlining/planning and revision/editing. Habits that suit my lifestyle will be worked out… so long as I write on the regular again.

Finally, there’s marketing and sales. If I ever wish to make this venture a financially lucrative one, I need to learn how to work that in. To be honest, I don’t have a single idea on what to do here. Social media networks are weird to me. In fact, although I have accounts in most SMNs, except TikTok, Truth Social, Twitter, and a few others, I struggle to operate them. I am currently on a 3-week total ban on it all. (Instagram is the worst for me — scrolling, not actually posting.) But I feel comfortable here on this site. Yet, though I know that I have this site and that it should be the internet center of my writing world, I don’t do anything about it. I’ve wanted to change that — so it feels high time that I do so. Social media networks are tools not unlike my site, and over time, I might learn to better use them. Even still, it is better to figure out how to do it here first.

It will take some time. And it feels even to me that I keep saying it. Let’s just say that I am going to keep saying it — and trying to do it — until it finally takes.