(Hi, folks! For the time being, some, most, or all of the fol­low­ing links will still revert back to the orig­i­nal Writ­ing About Writ­ing web­page over on Blog­ger. This is not a mis­take. It just takes a long time to move thou­sands of arti­cles. Thank you for your patience as we nav­i­gate this tran­si­tion.)

Question:Why didn’t you answer my question? Why won’t you answer my question? How do I ensure that you answer my question? 

Short answer: I might still be get­ting to it, or it may not have made the cut. If you want to hedge your bets, make it short, sweet, some­thing I haven’t answered already, and slip me a Ben­ny.

Long answer: Back in the day I kind of had to beg for ques­tions. Peo­ple would men­tion some­thing in pass­ing dur­ing a face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion, and I would write it up as if they had been sent in to be answered on the blog. I would pause ran­dom con­ver­sa­tions and say, “Do you mind if I use that ques­tion in my blog.” I would make up peo­ple’s names. I would mine the com­ment sec­tions on FB posts for any­thing I could respond to as if it had been sent in as a ques­tion.

These days I’m hav­ing the oppo­site prob­lem. I can write one or two answers a week, and I get a cou­ple of ques­tions on a slow day. I’m sure even with our Math for Lib­er­al Arts class­es, we writ­ers can fig­ure out how this one goes.
So first of all, your ques­tion might take a while to answer. I have a queue, but I also triage a bit too based on what seems like it fits my mood. It’s not every day I’m ready to apply post-struc­tural­ist, post­mod­ernist analy­sis to Ren and Stimpy, and I have to be in a mood to real­ly fire back at some of the hate mail with panache. Some­times I just want to tell you where the com­ma goes and go play some Hori­zon: Zero Dawn.

And some ques­tions may nev­er get answered.

Here’s a help­ful lit­tle flow­chart for you if you’re hop­ing to get your ques­tion answered on the blog.

1) Play me like an instru­ment. Mes­sage me. We con­nect and even­tu­al­ly meet for crepes. You seem to like me but not be starstruck or weird about it. This is, of course, a ruse. You tell me (all lies) how much you like MST3K, Net­flix binges, and three­somes. I am smit­ten. We go on a few more dates. Things get seri­ous. You pre­tend to fall for me. We move in togeth­er and you dis­cov­er how lit­tle I real­ly make from writ­ing, but stick with me for love. (It’s all part of the plan.) We get mar­ried and have a cou­ple of kids even though I wor­ry I’m too old to start a fam­i­ly. I nev­er notice the sin­is­ter spi­der-like look when our sec­ond child is born. Then, one day, you turn to me and say “Hey, if I asked you a ques­tion, will you answer it on your blog THIS WEEK.”

Absolute­ly yes!

Of course it’ll be ter­ri­ble when I real­ize this was all a long con to jump the Writ­ing About Writ­ing ques­tions queue, and my life is a total sham, but that is total­ly one way to get your ques­tion answered…um.…early.

Let’s go on to num­ber two though, just in case this isn’t what you had in mind.

2) First check to see if your ques­tion has been answered before. There’s The Best of The Mail­box, The Not-So-Best of the Mail­box, 20 Ques­tions, and Rage Against the Brecheen. You should also check the FREQUENTLY asked ques­tions both for the blog and for My Face­book Page.

I know that’s a lot to slog through, but the titles are pret­ty well labeled.

I may occa­sion­al­ly answer a ques­tion again (or even more like­ly, revise my old answer a bit) if it’s been a while or it could use some rehash­ing.

In a per­fect world, I would have enough time to make sure every­one who asks a redun­dant ques­tion gets a reply with the URL to the old answer, but depend­ing on how deep I am down the rab­bit hole at any giv­en time, I may not be able to do that. I’m over­whelmed by strangers try­ing to inter­act with me on the best of days.

3) Keep it short
I’m less like­ly to post a ques­tion that reads like a col­lege essay. I know we’re all writ­ers and it takes three pages to write a ques­tion oth­ers would com­pose in five words, but con­sid­er brevi­ty the soul of wit when it comes to what I’ll put up on the blog. I’ll still post a real­ly great ques­tion if it’s long and skip a real­ly short ques­tion if it’s not a good fit, but that’s the way to hedge your bets.

4) Keep an eye out for ques­tions LIKE yours
I get a lot of ques­tions, but many of them are sim­i­lar or almost iden­ti­cal. I may put up a dif­fer­ent ver­sion or a com­pos­ite ver­sion of your ques­tion, but it is still basi­cal­ly YOUR ques­tion. Which means your ques­tion might go to the back of the queue for some day, months from now, when half my read­er­ship has turned over and every­one who’s left can’t remem­ber the ear­li­er ver­sion.

5) Send it to my email (and label it with “Mail­box”)
I will answer ques­tions I get through the “Pri­vate Mes­sage” func­tion of Face­book, but I get a lot of those every day, and there is no way to mark them as impor­tant. So your ques­tion is like­ly to get pushed down and fall out of sight and out of mind. It will be MUCH more like­ly to be answered if you drop it in my email (chris.brecheen@gmail.com), where I can give it a star and come back to it when I have time. Also put “MAILBOX” some­where in the sub­ject line, so that when I do a key­word search for ques­tions, your ques­tion comes up.

6) Be a patron
Of course if you want to just help this artist/entertainer nav­i­gate the per­ils of a cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety, you could always go the total sell­out route. It may sound crass, but I give pref­er­ence to the folks keep­ing me flush in elec­tric­i­ty and calm land­lords. Patre­on sup­port­ers or any­one who has just dropped a tip into the con­spic­u­ous­ly placed tip jar I will hap­pi­ly let jump the queue.

Ques­tions? Com­ments? Want a future arti­cle to go into more detail? Mail me through our con­tact form. Just be sure to pick the right top­ic from the drop down menu, and check the archives—particularly the F.A.Q.—to see if your ques­tion has been asked before.

If you’re enjoy­ing this blog, and would like to see more arti­cles like this one, the writer is a guy with rent and insur­ance to pay who would love to spend more time writ­ing. Please con­sid­er con­tribut­ing to my Patre­on. As lit­tle as $3/month (less-than-a-lat­te a month) will get you in on backchan­nel con­ver­sa­tions, patron-only polls, and my spe­cial ear when I ask for advice about future projects or blog changes.

Or if a one-time dona­tion (or some type of non-mon­e­tary dona­tion) is more your speed, I have a Tip Jar with all the ways to help.