On procrastinations and resolutions

Between the improving weather, tee ball and the new job — plus occasional virtual forays into Elona and the return of new Grey’s Anatomy episodes — comics have gotten the short end of the stick the past couple of weeks and my Comic Book Commentary blog output has slipped dramatically.

It doesn’t help that I’m steadily moving away from floppies in favor of TPBs and OGNs — a move Marvel and DC are making especially easy lately with their overdoing it on the big event crossovers that have curbed my enthusiasm quite a bit, and smaller publishers have added to with their inability to deliver periodical fare on a timely basis — and my taste for comics journalism and general snark are suffering for it.

Blogging on a regular basis on a regular topic is tough, especially when you’re doing it for free, and I’ve noticed that I’ve been forcing it recently, often stretching too hard to come up with a post that doesn’t read as unnecessary as it felt to write. Bad timing, too, what with the recent switch from my own site to PopCultureShock. The pressure to post daily has definitely lessened, and my subject matter has broadened a bit as a result of the switch, but the larger audience brings a different kind of pressure for more substantive posts and I think I blew my load getting the old blog back up to snuff after my last extended break.

I’ve always been more of an inspirational writer than a self-disciplined one, so blogging (and before that, poetry) has been a perfect, if constantly shifting, medium for me to keep the creative juices flowing over the past few years.  (The argumentative juices, too!)  Even flowing water can seem stagnant after awhile without the proper filter, or if it remains confined to too limited an area, and I think that’s what I’ve been feeling the past year or two as I’ve bounced around in my “coverage” of the comics scene, all the while procrastinating focusing on my own writing.

Not counting the year in Virginia, it took me about two years to fully break away from poetry after I knew my interest in the medium had faded, both as a poet and an audience member, and I’m getting the sense that something similar is happening with comics. Not nearly as drastic, of course, as I still enjoy reading comics themselves, whereas most poetry makes my ears bleed, but enough so that writing about them is starting to feel like a chore.

I’ve had a copy of The Writer’s Block sitting on my desk for a few years now, and there’s some good generators in there to help kickstart the writing process. I think it’s time I finally made use of it, and am going to shoot for a weekly writing post (not sure what day, or whether it will be here or on my long-dormant writing blog) based on ideas I randomly pull from it. My “long-term” goal is to position myself to tackle NaNoWriMo again this year and actually see it through to its 50,000-word completion.

How’s that for a resolution?

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Written by Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez is the Chief Content Officer for LibraryPass, and former publisher & marketing director for Writer’s Digest. Previously, he was also project lead for the Panorama Project; director, content strategy & audience development for Library Journal & School Library Journal; and founding director of programming & business development for the original Digital Book World.