One year of "Letters from a Broad..."

Today's the day: one year ago today I started writing "Letters from a broad..." as a column in the (defunct) Utah Valley Monitor.

When I started, I set a goal to write regularly for one year and then decide what to do from there. Now I've succeeded in my goal, and I'm pleased with the results!!!

However -- as I'm sure many of you bloggers know only too well -- setting a goal to blog is a little like setting a goal to smoke crack. So it looks like for the moment I have no choice but to set a goal to not blog.

This hobby has become too much of a distraction from my real-life responsibilities: my family, my job, my home.

I've recently cut back on my working hours so that I can have one day a week to work on a new edition of my Java book and take care of my kids. This one day off per week is expensive for our little family, and I can't afford to let it get eaten up by blogging, which is would would happen if I'm not careful.

My plan is to temporarily go cold turkey from blogs and forums (except professional Java blogs and maybe my Star Trek forum), although I will probably still respond to comments on my blog. I expect to be back up and blogging some time in December. Hopefully JLO will be back from his hiatus around the same time. :D

When I come back, I hope to be starting on a brand-new Internet experiment:

I'm thinking of setting up a website for my novel Exmormon, and serializing it little by little through my blog over the course of a few years.

I got this idea because the Internet has been the root of so many fascinating innovations in communities and communication, and I'm curious to see what further directions it will lead. I know that in the past some novels were originally published as serials (notably some by Dickens), but it seems like that doesn't happen anymore -- I'm wondering if blogging and the Internet might bring it back. And I think it's very likely that more people will read the novel this way than if I find a real publisher.

This novel is (in my opinion) fabulous for this experiment because it's made up of independent segments that can be read separately. So I can pause between serializing different segments, and if new readers arrive after I'm two hundred pages into the story, they can pick up in the middle without being lost.

And if it doesn't fly it's no big loss -- I'm trying to take myself less seriously as a writer anyway. ;^)

That's why I only sent my novel pitch a few agents and publishers -- I've been planning this idea for a while.

Of course I'm still interested in finding a publisher who can get this book into real bookstores and such, so if you're a publisher or an agent (and willing to work with me on this serialize-it-through-my-blog idea), feel free to email me: chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com.

For the rest of you: Ta-ta for now!!! I look forward to seeing you again in December.

Keep blog space warm for me and don't let Outer Blogness go all to hell... ;^)