While combing through old posts last week I found a few updates I made last year. Back when I blogged on my website I tried to write an update each month just to cover my bases and hold myself accountable but I’ve neglected this habit here on Substack. In last June’s post I wrote about working on a fiction project, publishing some blogs on a few books I was reading, and completing my first zine.
I’m happy to report that I’ve finally published a zine!
This was something I’ve wanted to do for a long time mostly as a way to say thanks to my readers for all your support but also because I’ve seen so many creative zine projects here on Substack and wanted to get in on the fun.
It’s hard to believe but just that simple process of putting the task down on paper - ‘complete a zine in the next year’ - helped make that project a reality. I haven’t worked on it every week, or every month since, but it was always in the back of my mind so I started folder for ideas as they came. Eventually I put in a few days of some solid work and was able to get this completed before the ‘year’ was up.
Fortunately, I have that June 2024 post to look back on and consider my growth and progress over the last 12 months.
I also keep a writing planner with my tasks, goals, deadlines and a whole lot more but I think it’s time I started a monthly column here on my substack where I consider each month’s progress and write an update on what’s going on, what’s outstanding, what was completed and what’s coming up.
Newsletter
Taking a cue from Austin Kleon I’ve always hoped to be able to publish twice weekly since starting the newsletter back in 2022. Like Kleon, I figured I could do a weekly blog on a longer topic followed by a simple roundup each week. I’ve managed to publish nearly every Friday over the past three years but I’ve never been able to keep up two posts a week.
So my goal for the first half of this year was to try to publish twice weekly. I wasn’t always able to make that happen but in addition to publishing five bullets weekly I managed to:
write about a few books;
explore my creative process;
and do deep dives on musicians I love.
While working on the zine I had a chance to reflect on the work I’ve put into the newsletter over these last few years and consider where Circles In Space is heading in the future. I’ve realized that it’s not really sustainable for me to publish twice weekly. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m still working out how to manage publishing pieces of varying length - for example, I can manage writing about a book only once per month since it takes more time for these pieces to come to fruition. I can focus on shorter topics per week, or a few longer pieces every other week, with a larger piece once per month.
I’m also considering changing the format of my friday Five Bullet posts, and instead shifting to doing a ‘roundup’ of stuff to read, see and hear once per month rather than every week. Then I can use that Friday newsletter to write five bullets on a single topic. I think I’ll experiment with this and see how it works out.
I’ve got a few outstanding ideas for blogs posts I’ve already started working on.
First, I never finished writing about those three books I mentioned last June including Benjamin Franklin, Nuclear War and Moby-Dick.
Earlier this year I started reading about the history of the drum set and am still working on a blog post on this topic.
Last month I had a great time reading Ted Goia’s How To Listen To Jazz so I’d like to write about what I learned.
There’s a few shorter topics I’d like to write about, some podcasts and other videos.
Last June I also wrote that I wanted to do a podcast. This is still an idea I toy around with and I want to take steps to making it happen. Nothing too serious, just a few one-off conversations or ‘audio-blogs’ in future.
In other newsletter news, I now have enough material for a second zine which I expect will be dedicated to the ‘best of’ Five Bullets stuff. I’m looking forward to seeing how this turns out.
Fiction
As I mentioned in last years post, I was putting in a lot of time and effort towards meeting a daily fiction word count. I spent last summer and part of this winter working on that project but it’s still unfinished. Since then, I’ve been focusing more on short stories instead of that single, novel-length idea.
Ray Bradbury said that writing a novel is tough because you could work on it the whole year and not know if it’s any good so his advice was to write a short story each week. I think this is the kind of practice I need if I’m going to improve my fiction writing. I need to understand the basics, I need to experiment and I need to practice. But over the last few months as I’ve focused more on writing the newsletter, my fiction practice has waned.
Last weekend I attended my first fiction writing workshop which gave me some helpful tips. I already want to do another to get the basics down. I’m looking at my old stories now in a new light and feeling that I want to focus more on fiction writing than blogging in the coming months.
If I stick to the goal of one short story per week that will give me about 15 short stories by the end of the summer.
Reading
I didn’t read 20 books last year. Since I started keeping track in 2020 I haven’t been able to break 20 books. I added a few audiobooks and e-books to my list this year so maybe this year will be the year!
Here’s what I’ve read so far:
Steal Like An Artist, Keep Going and Show Your Work, Austin Kleon.
Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion.
The Ship Beneath The Ice, Mensun Bound.
Endurance, Alfred Lansing.
Steig Larson’s Lisbeth Salander trilogy
Station Eleven, Emily St. Mandel.
Kafka On The Shore, Haruki Marukami.
How To Listen To Jazz, Ted Goia.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, John Le Carré.
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.
Here’s what I hope to read soon:
The Power Broker, Robert Caro.
Fear City, Kim Phillips-Fein.
The Mole People, Jennifer Toth.
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy.
Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson.
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith.
Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathem Lethem.
The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster.
Backbeat: Earl Palmer’s Story, Earl Palmer.
Kick It, Matt Brennan.
The Roots of Rock Drumming, Steve Smith & Daniel Glass.
Brothers, Alex Van Halen.
The Notebook, Roland Allen.
Deep Work, Cal Newport.
The Wager, David Grann.
So that’s everything I’ve been up over the last six months! I think I’ve got it all down. It’s a lot to plan, organize, work on and complete but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now I just need to get to work!
Note to self: do an Updates post each month.
Until next time,
Keith.