Well, I managed to do it: I posted a weekly blog post without missing any weeks for the entirety of 2017. They didn’t all get posted reliably on the same day of the week, but each week got its entry, and I wrote for a year on a weekly basis on the subject of being genderqueer, trying to get my book on the subject published, and gender politics and issues in general.
2016 ended with the publisher who had selected my book going out of business, and the literary agent who had temporarily worked with me to secure a decent contract with that publisher choosing not to represent my book going forward from that point. So electing to blog on a weekly basis was sort of a way of doubling down to affirm to myself a sense of commitment to the project. It was also consistent with trying to create more of a “platform”, to see if I could bring in something akin to a regular readership of people who were tuned in to my posts and who would reply and interact. But ultimately the blogging was an end unto itself, an avenue of communication that I had available to me now and not just potentially, a way to try to reach people that did not have to wait for a publisher.
I hope you’ve found these entries provocative, intriguing, entertaining, and illuminating. Or that you’ve occasionally found them to be at least one of those things. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them just as I’ve enjoyed writing them and making them available.
2017 ends with my second publisher having indicated that they would only publish the book with substantial cuts that I did not want to make, and in the wake of my decision not to make those cuts, with me once again without a publisher and back to square one.
I expect to find another one. I don’t know when, but I am stubborn and I am only 59 and in good health and I can keep doing this for several decades.
I haven’t decided yet whether to keep on blogging on a weekly schedule or not, and I’m not sure whether I should continue to echo my blog posts on the Straight Dope. The Dope is a general-purpose message board and my blog is a narrowly-focused blog. While I don’t think my blog posts are inappropriate here (and neither do the mods and admins, apparently), I appear to be creating the impression that I don’t ever think about or write about anything else.
(On Facebook groups, I simply post a link to my blog posts when they go up, but the Dope’s board culture doesn’t support just posting links, so I’ve echoed the entire blog post each time).
As far as continuing to blog, I definitely don’t want to let my blog languish with just a monthly post here and there, which was sort of happening in 2016. So maybe I will continue to blog weekly. We’ll see. I wish more people were letting me know they were reading my blog. I wish I had more comments.
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AHunter3 blogs weekly on the subject of being genderqueer, gender politics issues in general, and his ongoing attempts to get his book published. These blog posts tend to be anywhere from 500 to 2500 words in length and are written in the style of a regular column in a periodical.
The reposting of these blog posts has been cleared with the moderators in advance.