f you work in social media or digital marketing, starting over is the millstone around your neck. It comes with the territory. Platforms rise and fall, as predictable as fireworks exploding and burning out over a summer lake. Sometimes you’re sad remembering when it was fresh and fun. Sometimes you’re quietly grateful to see it put out of its misery.
Indie authors have a similar cycle. Every few years you more or less have to start over, because “what works” has shifted so far that nothing you knew is still trustworthy.
And of course, as humans, we’re often faced with the prospect of starting over. Maybe life threw you a curveball you didn’t see coming. Maybe it was the kind of inevitable change you prepare years for… then find yourself unprepared to accept.
RPG players – tabletop and computer games alike – are familiar with the impulse to rebuild their character from scratch and restart a game knowing what you didn’t know before. We call it “Restart Disease.”
That’s the good part of starting over – the ability to apply knowledge you didn’t have before. But still… there’s the temptation to cling to old patterns, even ones you know deep down aren’t gonna work any better this time around. And no matter how much you love the glorious potential of a blank page… starting over sorta sucks.
This is perhaps a bit heady for an introductory post to my newest blog/newsletter. But I’ve been doing this since 2004. I don’t have any illusions that this blog will be a magic platform. It’s fun, promising and (knocks on wood) isn’t unapologetically platforming actual Nazis. Which is enough, for now.
My intention is to make this the hub for my personal creative work. Right now what that looks like is … not a lot. I’m focused on some big impact projects at World Anvil, and finishing up my first semester back at college pursuing a film degree. That by itself is a lot of creative output. But over the summer, I hope to spend some time on the following projects:
- Sorcery & Stitches, my cozy fantasy serial fiction, and a related collab with my SPI Girls Kick Ass co-authors.
- Turning my novel Her Immortal Guardian (as Mara Dane) into a horror romcom screenplay in the vein of Warm Bodies, Lisa Frankenstein and Your Monster.
- Another Cypher System RPG Short, Operation Crimson Veil (spy shenanigans for fans of Man from UNCLE, Mission Impossible, etc.)
- A gen-x contemporary romcom (no working title).
- Folk Rock Horror – my “Scooby Doo meets Cthulhu meets Fleetwood Mac” worldbuilding project. (At some point, I think it will either become a screenplay, novel or some other narrative project).
That’s… a lot. But you know what? They’re all projects that have been floating around in my head for a while. And I’m grateful that I’m sticking with them, instead of starting over with a bunch of new projects. 😉