Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

So far, the results from my poll on subscriber interest and visiting schedule have been small but consistent.

Readers who expressed an opinion, said that they visit about 3 times per week, and want more writerly content–actual writing, or discussions on writing.

What prompted me to ask these questions?

I’ve kept up the 5-days-a-week pace for over a year, now. It was beneficial for me, keeping me writing to a schedule when I wasn’t actively writing a work-in-progress, driving me to put words down and think like a writer again. While this was worthwhile, the statistics were pretty clear: a lot of the posts were not being read. Now that I’m working on projects–even with my current short-story remodel–I find that blog-writing is eating into project-writing.

I was concerned by this conflict, and sought advice; from you, from writers, from editors.

There are plenty of blogs out there–good ones–discussing the latest news about the publishing industry. There are plenty of movie and book review sites. There are a bazillion food blogs. And gardening blogs. And political/cultural analysis blogs.

As I state on my About page, I am not just one thing. I am not just a writer. But this blog is a writing tool. It is honing steel for my skills, helping me keep them true and sharp, and thus, I’m going to recalibrate, and shift the focus a bit.

I still want to post the odd book or movie review, the occasional opinion about a piece of news, but I’m going to concentrate on the writing focus. Just as with my review of Quiet, it will be about how this has helped or affected me as a writer. My movie reviews will be my opinion as a writer, as were my reviews of The Words and The Cabin in the Woods. Naturally, I’ll still post on the larger subjects of publishing and the writing industry, when such topics have an effect on me as a writer, as did Stephen King’s recent interview in The Atlantic.

As for recipes, sorry…I’m still going to post those. I love cooking (I have an idea for a new hot sauce I’m going to try this weekend.) After all, half the traffic on this site is for my Chicken Noodle Soup à la David Chang.

The main focus, however, will shift away from these side-topics. Instead, I’ll concentrate on my process–how I write, when I write, what I’m learning as I write. I’ll also post more actual writing product, be it essays like yesterday’s elegy for a friend who passed away, descriptive pieces like Watching Ariadne, travel pieces like my a recent post from the beach, poems like Masquerade, or simple excerpts from work-in-progress.

I’m also going to cut back from five posts a week to two or three, and that is primarily to give me more time to think about writing, research projects, and…well…write.

This may cut my overall hit-count, but I’m not doing this for hit-count. By far, the most direct feedback I’ve received is from people who like the writing and the posts on writing. And I enjoy writing those the most.

Win-win, eh?

Hope so…

k