Hello, friends! Welcome to 2023!
I have big plans for the year to come, both for writing/blogging and for life stuff. But first, I have a few announcements to make, and I’m not sure how you, dear reader, are going to react to some of this stuff. Just please be assured that I didn’t make any of these decisions lightly.
My New Blogging Schedule
In 2023, I will continue to participate in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG). I will also continue to write Sciency Words. My blog schedule should work something like this:
- IWSG posts will come out on the first Wednesday of the month, as always.
- On non-IWSG weeks, I plan to do two or three blog posts about science and/or science fiction.
- Sciency Words posts will come out on Mondays, except during IWSG weeks.
- Once a month, I’m going to do a post updating you about any new artwork available for sale in my RedBubble store. If you’re not interested in these “advertisement” blog posts, you can ignore them. I won’t be offended.
Also, I plan to participate in the A to Z Challenge again this year. I’m still trying to narrow down what my theme will be, but I can tell you it will have something to do with space. Obviously.
Experimenting with Social Media
I deleted my Facebook account a long time ago, and I have now also deleted my account on Twitter. I used to really like Facebook. I used to really like Twitter. But these two social media platforms are just not fun anymore. Not for me, at least, and so I’m moving on.
I’m a little commitment-shy with social media platforms right now, but I am genuinely enjoying Mastodon. I’m also starting to play with Hive Social. We’ll see how that goes. If you want to connect with me on either of those platforms, my Mastodon address is @JSPailly@universeodon.com. On Hive Social, I’m @JSPailly.
And if there are other social media platforms you think I should look into, let me know. I plan to experiment with multiple platforms in the coming months, so I’m very open to suggestions.
The Future of Tomorrow News Network
This is the part I’m most nervous to tell you about. A few years ago, I published a novella-length Sci-Fi story on Amazon. The plan was for that story to be the first in a series of novella-length stories, all set in the same universe. But then some stuff happened in my personal life, which messed up my writing agenda, and now I can’t follow through on that original plan. I’m not the same person I was before, and my heart is just not in it.
So I’ve developed a new plan. I’m super excited about this new plan. It uses some of the same concepts and characters that appeared in the novella-length story I published before, but I’m taking those concepts and characters in a completely new and different direction. Unfortunately, this creates significant continuity problems for me, and I’m afraid that leaving the original novella-length story out there would lead to a lot of confusion for readers. So that novella is no longer available for sale. I pulled it from Amazon. I feel really awful about that, but there’s simply no way for me to move forward with my writing unless I give myself a clean slate.
As I said before, I didn’t make any of these decisions lightly—especially that last one—but now that the decisions have been made, I am really excited for the year to come. And I hope that you, dear readers and dear friends, will join me for my new adventures in space, science, art, and writing.
Planet Pailly 
Happy New Year!
Looking forward to it all.
I haven’t played with Hive. The whole mobile only thing, plus their security meltdown, made me pass them by. I did get a Post.news account, but not much happening on it, and it feels too much like a Twitter-clone. Right now Mastodon still seems like the most viable alternative.
But in the end, I’ll go where the interesting people are (academics and authors in my case). I hope those people choose better this time.
On pulling the novella, you realize once you make it big that novella will become a legendary collector’s item.
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Hive has yet to really impress me. They say the security issue has been fixed, but the app still seems a little buggy to me. Not sure if I’ll stick with Hive or not. I’m loving Mastodon, but I don’t want to put all my social media eggs in one social media basket again. So I’ll keep experimenting with other things.
Regarding the novella, I hadn’t thought about that. That makes me feel a little better about how that whole situation played out.
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I’m not really seeing the social network thing as an investment anymore. I took in the advice years ago that you need to build a network to promote your stuff. But my experience is that it mostly doesn’t work. (And tends to attract the wrong crowd when it does.) Which resonates with what I’ve seen others like Sabine Hossenfelder and Fraser Cain say, that they get very little real traffic from Twitter, Facebook, etc, for their Youtube videos and articles. For example: https://universeodon.com/@fcain@astrodon.social/109526564954250969
It seems best to see those networks as another place to catch information, and maybe have interesting conversations, and then only if you enjoy it. Thinking like that is kind of liberating.
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I think you and I are on the same wavelength about that. If I’m “investing” in anything, it’s more of an emotional investment. I put a lot of time and effort into Twitter, and I really did feel sad deleting my account. So going forward, I don’t want to rely too heavily on any one social media platform. I’m loving Mastodon right now, but if things ever change there I want to be sure I have other options.
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Good luck with the new plan!
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Thanks, friend! I’m really excited for the new direction I’m going with my writing.
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I’m not creating posts for Facebook and Twitter anymore, only allowing WordPress to place links to my blog posts. I suppose I’ll get around to deleting the accounts sometime. Mastodon! I’ve read about that, but it looks complicated.
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It sounds like people have wildly different experiences with Mastodon depending on which instance they sign up for. I guess I kind of lucked out with Universeodon. The community there is a pretty good fit for my interests, and whoever maintains the technical side of things seems to be doing a good job. I’ve heard horror stories about other instances that were not well maintained.
Signing up (specifically the picking an instance part of signing up) was the only confusing part for me. Once that was done, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being on Mastodon.
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Thanks for the input. Now I know at least one place on Mastodon that may work
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Good luck with the new novella. Sounds like you made the right choice to pull the old one and use what fits best from that moving forward. I’ll be interested to see the new story.
You’ve set yourself an ambitious agenda. Good luck and happy writing.
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you gotta do what make the words go! Can’t wait to see what you come up with
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Thanks, friend! It should be a fun year of writing for me!
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Happy New Year
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Thanks! Same to you!!!
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No, it makes sense to pull the one story if it no longer fits with your plans. We do grow and change as writers.
Never been on Facebook and I ignore most of the political crap on Twitter. Although it’s certainly getting interesting and a bit funny right now!
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It is kind of funny, in a way. Twitter sort of became a parody of itself. I tried my very best to ignore political Twitter. I muted and blocked lots of people and topics, but stuff kept slipping into my feed anyway. I don’t know what to do at this point, other than just go somewhere else.
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