Friday, May 13, 2016

HEARTFELT THANKS FROM ME TO YOU


As often happens to free-lancers, for the last couple of months I’ve been very busy. That’s a fact, not an excuse.

But then again, no excuse (or fact) is worthy when it means taking for granted the kindness and loyalty of the people who support you, and one fact that comes home to me every time I check my blog stats is that the readership I’ve gathered for this blog is loyal and kind beyond all logic. The facts speak for themselves: In the past eight years, this blog has burgeoned from a mere handful of readers to peaks of literally thousands of hits for certain particularly popular entries. But what inspires me the most—as well as shames me—is that, during long periods like my latest hiatus, when I fail to publish a single line for  weeks on end, the stats show that a faithful core readership checks in here between six hundred and seven hundred fifty times a month to see what’s new! Furthermore, many of those who find nothing new go back through the index and read pieces they might have missed in the past.
I just want you all to know that I am overwhelmed with gratitude for this, the kindest gesture any writer can ask for—that people are eager to read his/her work. That’s why I decided this week to impose a twice-monthly blog deadline on myself, and I will give those deadlines for The Southern Yankee priority over any other activity, not for the sake of self-discipline, but to reward the extraordinary persistence and loyalty of my readers. That said, as of today, The Southern Yankee will present a new entry, at the very least, on the 13th and 27th of every month...as well as whenever else the spirit moves me to post additional pieces.
When I started this blog in 2008, I really didn’t have very high hopes for it.
For one thing, although I became a professional Internet user very early on, in the mid-nineties, it was out of necessity rather than choice, since I had decided to leave the big city (Buenos Aires), where I’d been making a living in journalism for twenty years, to take up a life that my wife and I had long dreamed of, in the relative wilds on the outskirts of a Patagonian ski resort in the Andes Mountains. Though we had actually wanted to make our new life in an even more remote area, this was as far away as we could get from civilization and still have access to at least barely adequate communications.
The Internet (in a timid dial-up version) arrived, only shortly after we did, through the local electric power cooperative and I was one of the first customers for it. Before that, I had to send work I did for a magazine, a news agency or other publishing operations via fax, first through a telephone exchange five miles away and, a little  later, from my own mountain home, after a long, uphill battle with the phone company—that convincingly reached the office of its president in Buenos Aires, a thousand miles away—until they finally agreed to put up twenty-five posts and string cable over a mile in from the highway along a twisting, climbing mountain lane to my cabin.
So it wasn’t like I was a nerdy Internet enthusiast. On the contrary, everything I learned, and continue to learn, about life on line is basically intuitive and via trial and error, since I have never been able to muster the interest or wherewithal to sit through any sort of course on computing, cybernetics, apps or the Internet per sé. For me, all of that is merely a tool—if an absolutely marvelous one—for sharing my work and my writing with my clients and with the world. And were it not a matter of necessity, I would surely still be writing this on one of several sturdy desk model manual typewriters that I’ve owned over the years.
For another thing, I had no knowledge whatsoever of the effectiveness of the social media in getting out the word about what you’re doing. The fact is that I only joined Facebook and then started a blog to placate a New York writer friend with whom I had worked in Buenos Aires, who was trying to help me find a literary agent and/or publisher for my fiction and non-fiction creative work. His point was a valid one: namely, that I would have to be a really egocentric ninny to think that anyone would remember my days as a Buenos Aires editor, columnist and foreign correspondent when I hadn’t had any serious visibility in the mainstream media for over a decade and a half. Blogging and Facebook were, he insisted, good tools for rebuilding my writing reputation after years of anonymous editing, research and translating.
So, applying a strategy called “controlled folly”, as suggested by brilliant if controversial writer Carlos Castaneda, I set out to write a blog, and the first article was on the subject of precisely the question I’d been wrestling with: Why blog?  (http://southernyankeewriter.blogspot.com.ar/2008/07/so-why-blog.html)  My answer, sifted through Castaneda’s sieve of the ridiculous, was the same as that of John Updike, who was quoted in that first entry: Why not?
At first, it was just a matter of getting the material out there. Having a blog gave me an “excuse” to write for myself instead just for hire. It challenged me to come up not only with new topics, new angles, new creative ideas, but also to revisit old memories and issues that had haunted me for years. It further challenged me to dig long lost manuscripts out of their hiding places in drawers, closets and disused briefcases and re-read them with a judiciously self-critical eye to see whether they were truly the serious works I’d thought they were when I wrote them or if they were, in the end, no more than random doodles of little or no value.
And so I started publishing. At first, practically no one read my blog. But I was also learning the ropes of communicating through Facebook and once I figured out how to post a link to the blog, things started looking up. Having written, back in the day, for a daily paper with a readership in the tens of thousands, and having been a stringer for major mass circulation newspapers and magazines in the US and Britain, the paltry early results of blogging seemed hardly worth the effort. But like a novice writer, despite a thirty-five-year career as a wordsmith, I found myself beaming when I would check my stats and see that a piece in my blog had gotten fifty or sixty hits. And when I started getting my first comments from readers, I was ecstatic. Why? Because this was all mine—the ideas, the words, the medium, the writing and, above all, the readers.
In short, I just want to say a heartfelt “thank you” to all of you for reading me, for identifying with what I write, for telling me how you feel both here and in Facebook, for taking the trouble to register as regular Followers of this blog, and for giving me the key element every writer needs to keep turning out stories and ideas: a faithful and responsive readership.
Many thanks, and I’ll see you here every 13th and 27th from now on.



4 comments:

Sylvia said...

Delighted to read your decision to make two or more entries each month. Sounds a bit like a New Year's resolution -no offense intended- so I shall be awaiting these entries with enthusiasm. I'm having computer problems so I haven't made any comments lately. Also, my husband died not very long ago, so I sort of stopped writing altogether, except for those 'likes' on Facebook and the usual petitions I sign for worthy causes, a lot to do with the prevention of cruelty to animals.
My daughter gave me a tablet, very handy for small things, but no good for proper writing. I hope your decision inspires me to continue writing, although that'll be when I purchase a desktop.
Congratulations, Dan, it's always interesting to read your blog!
Sylvia

Dan Newland said...

Many thanks as ever, Sylvia, for being such a loyal reader and for your always excellent and thought-provoking comments. I don't make New Year's resolutions, by the way. Well...I do, but knowing full well I'll break them pretty much as soon as the evening's quiet toasts have worn off.
For a very long time, I have wanted to turn this blog from a "whenever-it-comes-outly" into a weekly publication that readers could count on. I thought about first making it at least monthly, but found that too long-term for a blog and pretty restrictive as well. I mean, a monthly's a monthly--12 a year, one for each month, or one per full moon, if I'm feeling werewolfy--so what if I had an inspiring out-of-work month and wanted to do two, three, five, half a dozen?
Finally, I said to myself, Dan, you've got to stop working around your work for hire and commit to all of the loyal readers you clearly have for your own work. One way to do that will be to self-publish some book-length works (more on that later), but the best way to keep in touch with readers is through the blog. Only, however, if it comes out regularly.
So, I said, okay, twice monthly: I can do that, no matter what comes up. Whatever else there is will just have to wait. My own work and my readers deserve that much commitment out of me. And twice monthly is flexible enough to say, it'll be two a month...unless I have something else in a given month that I just can't wait to share.
Why the 13th and the 27th? Because the 13th was when I had the first entry in the "new era" ready, and the 27th because there's no month with fewer than 28 days and the 27th is a fortnight after the 13th, which seemed like a good timeline.
But now, let's talk about you, Syl! You MUST write, if for no other reason BECAUSE your husband (RIP) passed away not long ago. I wouldn't say this to just anyone, Sylvia, but I have read you and know full well that you ARE a writer. And what you write is so extraordinarily descriptive, insiteful, heart-rendingly raw, yet gentle as a butterfly's touch (an incredible combination that few ever achieve) that it is almost a sin for you not to keep sharing it by any means you can.
Despite what anyone might think, inspiration is not a "eureka moment". Inspiration comes WITH the writing, not before it. I can't recall for sure, but I think it was Carson McCullers who said she wasn't always inspired but that every morning she was sitting at her writing desk waiting, just in case inspiration came. And Hemingway said, simply--and typically--"I write every morning." And Louis L'amour once said, "Write no matter what: The water doesn't flow until the faucet's turned on."
Your writing's too good to deprive others of reading it. Set yourself a goal, if you have to (like maybe for producing a self-published e-book of Patagonian short stories and poetry, for instance), a "controlled folly" to get you back to the notebook or to the keyboard on a regular basis.
Good luck!
And thanks again.

Sylvia said...

Back at last, Dan! I still haven't purchased a new computer, so I'm making do with a laptop Diana lent me. She's away in Mallorca... Wow... I've been there, about 30+ years ago, nonetheless I'm envious! We're keeping in touch via Whatsup, mainly due to Spain's being 5 hours ahead of us. It's just so beautiful. Diana's father lived there (my first husband), but he also died a month ago. She's staying with her two half-sisters, who happen to be identical twins. A ceremony has been postponed till her arrival with Roberto. So that's also made me sad, after all, he was father to our three children.
That being said, I'm really grateful for your encouragement to begin writing again, and the sincere comments you've made above. I know you would never flatter somebody 'just because', you're not that sort of person.
I also believe I've found an inspirational place to write, the view is fantastic. Perhaps you know a restaurant-coffee shop called 'Charming'? A friend invited me today. She herself goes there to prepare classes she gives at the Centro Atómico, where she teaches English and French to scientists. Despite the name, the place really is charming! I'll take a paper notebook to scribble on... whatever crosses my mind.
I see you've complied with your resolution on the exact date. Congratulations! I've read part of it, but will comment another day, as it's now 2 a.m. Feeling rather dim...
All the best, Sylvia

Dan Newland said...

Good for you, Syl! Find a place you're comfy in and WRITE! And, no, I wouldn't compliment anyone "just because". In fact I can be downright harsh when I don't like something. But what I've read of your writing has always been top-notch and highly original. Write!