Hi There

Hello everyone. I'm typing directly into the Ghost draft editor today, which means we don't get curly quotes or apostrophes. I'm sorry about that, but not sorry enough to copy-paste my way out of the situation.

One of my favorite elements shared among the blogs and newsletters I read is the fireside chat vibe, where the author just speaks as themselves without ornamentation. I realized the other day that I never do that. It's a habit from academia, I think—the feeling that every post has to be an airtight standalone unit. It makes things feel overproduced, in my opinion. I'd like to overcome it.

Anyway, let's chat now.

I have an exciting longer post coming that really tickles me, but I keep pushing it back because I really want to get it right. Feel free to tremble with anticipation.

Let me confess, though, that I've just been having the worst writer's block for the longest time. Every post you've read here was wrung out like blood from a stone. That's part of why you get weird posts like Plomp, Plomp, Plomp; it's me trying to get creative to outwit the writer's block demons. There will probably be more weird stuff—I don't know—I'm trying to figure it out.

Aside from writing here, I also write stories. (Those are also tortured by writer's block.) I'm thinking of posting some of them here. We'll see. My best stories are out for sale, so I can't put them here, and I don't really want to show you my lesser work; but maybe there are some things that are high quality and not super publishable I could throw up here. If I do, I'll flag that it's fiction so you can keep the continuity straight. (The other day, I was browsing a substack where half the posts were fiction but weren't labeled as such, and I got intensely confused.)

I might also try more easy-peasy chats like this, provided I have something to talk about. Maybe I'll talk about current events. (That would be dangerous.) But writing right into the editor like this nice. Except for the poor curly quotes.