As I delving back into the habit of writing prose versus my habit in recent years of writing almost exclusively poetry, I’m tossing around several ideas to bounce around my largely empty cranium.
Okay, it’s more like dumping a large bucket of superballs at this time.
Or, if I’m more upfront and honest about what I’m doing, throwing the whole bunch of superballs all at once as hard as I can and see what comes out of the bouncy mess.
While Sunny Day Parasol Co. is taking up most of my creative energy at the moment, I am working on several conceptual ideas in the background for consideration as I look to the future. Unless something changes in the meantime, a return to writing regular, episodic/serialized fiction is likely in the cards for me.
Why? Because I’m enjoying the process and I’ve thought since the early 00s that the serial is the best approach to fiction-writing in the age of the internet when presented on the internet (which is not necessarily true when fiction is presented in physical formats).
I’ve also been thinking hard about audience as well, recognizing that not everyone likes a mixture of fiction, poetry, random ponders disguised as thinks, and the occasional bit song. In my experience and by and large, fiction folks like fiction and poetry folks like poetry. Music and Ponders can tolerated as long as they don’t completely disrupt the flow of the first two buckets. At least, that is the sense I get when reading between the lines in the comments over my 20+ years writing blogs.
As I consider forking my prose off to another domain, largely to improve readability considerations — which are different than blogging or short-form writing — I thought I’d ask folks to pipe in and tell me what you think about my impressions of readers’ habits. While I know that some of you have one foot on the sidewalk and the other in the gutter (I’ll let you frame which is which in this analogy), I have gathered that most folks prefer to keep both feet on the same surface. I’m not talking specific to this site or my writing, I speaking in more generalized terms across the online options out there.
Do I have a bad misread on the situation? Am I seeing divisions that do not exist? Or am I spot on? i.e., “Michael, I really prefer to read [fill in the blank] exclusively, if given the choice.”
If you had an ideal presentation of either prose or poetry (or a blend), how do you think it would be best presented that is maybe not meeting your ideals? Is there a site I should look at that you think does it the best? Or do you think finding the right kind of presentation is a unicorn of sorts? Or am I bouncing too many superballs?
How important is it to be able to have a conversation with the writer of fiction on a per-post basis in the comments? Or do you find most comments are “feel good comments” and not really conversational? How important is keeping track of conversations to you: critical to engagement, a nice thing to have, or meh?
Lots of questions. I am more interested in generalized responses rather than opinions about my many possible intentions.
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