It’s been a few years, but it’s time to renew a time-hon­ored tra­di­tion of per­haps the worst play on words imag­in­able. (Except for maybe the joke about going to the den­tist at 2:30 [tooth-hur­ty].) What once was a major annu­al under­tak­ing at Writ­ing About Writ­ing will now be moved to The Cook­ie Crum­bles.

It is the return of Blo­gust. But… uh… in Sep­tem­ber.

Look, we had a tough August. We had a tough sum­mer. We had a tough year. We had… you know what? Life has been on over­drive for a while now, but then, this sum­mer, um… mis­takes were made. (Chris said, hop­ing no one would notice the pas­sive voice.)

See, there were no absolute shat­ter­ing crises after about March—which I’ll admit was a lit­tle weird—and since both Rhap­sody and I were feel­ing “bet­ter,” we overex­tend­ed our­selves and had to learn that our lim­i­ta­tions were more mod­est than we had hoped. Four years of night­mare mode took more than a minute to process. Per­haps the dai­ly enter­tain­ment of an eight-year-old with­out screens or camps was a more ambi­tious first step than it seemed back in April. Per­haps I should have locked my door and deployed motion detec­tion auto-tur­rets at the entrance.

But then they come through the vents.

Mis­takes, as I said, were made.

To be hon­est, if you’ve been around, you know that we had a tough post-can­cer. My writ­ing career has had a lull that is almost as long as the “on” part. They tell you how long your body is going to take to recov­er from var­i­ous injuries. They don’t men­tion your mind. The way it takes months before you have an atten­tion span over two min­utes. You can’t even enjoy a book or a crunchy TV show for the first year and a half.

And it’s not as if the last decade has been easy, with its life upheavals and emo­tion­al shat­ter­ings. I’ll spare you the details—if you’ve fol­lowed along, you know the high­light reel (break up, sep­a­ra­tion from The Con­trar­i­an, mis­car­riage, can­cer, huge breakups, the kid­do mov­ing around the world, a bru­tal killing, chron­ic pain, Rhapsody’s surgery and recov­ery, unfath­omably dif­fi­cult sup­port mode). This nar­ra­tive will either make you weep pro­lif­i­cal­ly that such tragedy is per­mit­ted to exist, or worse, you’ll think, “Oh, there goes Chris again.”

Both are prob­a­bly equal­ly valid.

I haven’t always han­dled it the way 2015-writer-Chris said that a‑writer-who-want­ed-to-make-it should han­dle life’s tri­als and tribu­la­tions. (“Just keep writ­ing and nev­er ever stop! Write every day. Write like the wind!”) I have kept writ­ing, but I haven’t kept blog­ging and pub­lish­ing. And regard­less of how many peo­ple remind­ed me that my worth was not defined by my pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, pay­ing the rent got a lit­tle hard­er every sea­son.

Now… the next part I have to whis­per. I can’t let the uni­verse hear. Folks, I’ve said, “I’m back, baby” so many times and then had my life collapse—sometimes the very next day—that I’m almost super­sti­tious about it. I don’t even want to THINK those words.

But Blo­gust is here. Well… tech­ni­cal­ly, AUGUST came and went in a mael­strom of sum­mer tran­si­tions and mis­man­aged time. So, we’re doing Blo­gust in Sep­tem­ber. The writ­ing needs to be done. (Chris said, using the pas­sive voice in the hopes that a capri­cious uni­verse would­n’t notice.)

What is Blo­gust?

I’m so glad you asked.

Back in the past, I would work 70–90 hours a week dur­ing the sum­mer, teach­ing and nan­ny­ing, and it didn’t leave much time for writ­ing. So, I cel­e­brat­ed the free­dom from at least my sum­mer school teach­ing gig every August by set­ting some absurd pro­duc­tiv­i­ty goal and an equal­ly absurd fundrais­ing goal, and I would go to town for the entire month.

Back then, that was two posts a day. Back then I was absolute­ly ridicu­lous. I’m going to aim for three (maaaaaaybe four) a week and see how it goes.

And that’s what you’re going to get: lots of blog posts and—as the month progresses—lots of appeals posts. 

I have to be hon­est with you… it will prob­a­bly take me a lit­tle while to get back to some of the Writ­ing About Writ­ing top­ics. I have no inten­tion of mov­ing away from them in the long term, and there’s still plen­ty of advice to dis­pense (we haven’t even touched on set­ting as kinet­ic land­scape yet), but I’m a lit­tle burned out. I keep sit­ting down to write anoth­er lis­ti­cle and find­ing myself sput­ter­ing and lean­ing towards oth­er top­ics. Right now, there are a host of new and shiny sub­jects that have sparked my blog­ging enthu­si­asm. So, get ready for a month of:

• Polyamory and Non-Monogamy posts
• Pagan Priest­hood posts about The Mor­ri­g­an
• A new series of posts (hope­ful­ly week­ly) of Tarot read­ings
• The usu­al bar­rage of Social Jus­tice Bard posts (now with new and improved left­ist infight­ing)
• The Best of Face­book posts from the last cou­ple of months
• A fine selec­tion of our best Writ­ing About Writ­ing reruns 
• And at least ONE more of our very pop­u­lar series: “Buy Me Lunch Answers”.

As we move lat­er into the month, I’m also going to start some appeals posts. 

I know how those posts go over. 

I know that con­tent cre­ators “pass­ing the hat” start to get on people’s nerves. Espe­cial­ly if they do it ANY more than once every thir­ty-five years.

I just want to remind every­one that every EVERY bit of writ­ing I EVER do (with the excep­tion of some newslet­ters that are reward tiers for Patre­on) is free online. You might get some bun­dled ebooks with a lot of good arti­cles in one place in the next year-ish, but you don’t HAVE to spend a dime if you don’t have one.

That said…I’ve got the same bills as every­one else—things like rent and electricity—and a few bills that most peo­ple don’t have—like the surgery to remove a soft­ball-sized tumor. But no mat­ter what I’m pay­ing for, crowd­fund­ing is how I get paid for my writ­ing. 

So, please hang in there if these posts both­er you, but please do con­sid­er sup­port­ing this writ­ing so that I can con­tin­ue doing it. And frankly, so I have to make few­er such posts.

And if we real­ly kick ass and take names, maybe Blo­gust can be in August next year.