The Sudden Walk has existed for a whole calendar year.
I’m not going to vomit out the cliche, ‘I can’t believe it’s lasted this long,’ because I knew I’d get here.
I didn’t know I’d fall into a rhythm of writing one a week. I didn’t know I’d start writing any, let alone the tens of non-fiction posts I’ve ended up putting together on here. But I never doubted this thing would evolve into something more than what it started out as.
That seems to be a trend in my life. The thing that draws me to the party is rarely the thing that convinces me stay.
For those who arrived at this page later on, I started The Sudden Walk in an attempt to get my writing critiqued by Fight Club author, Chuck Palahniuk—a goal which is yet to be realised, but has become secondary at this point.
The Sudden Walk has become a place for me to put my thoughts in order, and capture the links I notice between life and writing.
It’s an accountability resource which I didn’t know I needed. But the longer this thing keeps going, the more I find there is a power in having to press publish on a regular basis.1
Though I assume I’m writing into the abys most of the time, the public nature of this page has definitely challenged me to measure my opinions a bit more than I used to— questioning whether I genuinely stand by a given point, do I want to use this particular example?
There was a time when I would have turned my nose up at any form of self-censorship, but what I’m describing here is different. I’m not pandering to a lowest common denominator, I’m not shying away from a majority take. It’s about taking an extra moment to visualize the devil’s advocate, considering how a dissenter would argue against a certain point I’m trying to make, and account for that before I press publish. The knowledge that someone I disagree with might read this at some point, is enough to make me strengthen each argument I make in preparation. Preempting their imaginary criticisms. All of which fleshes out into better ideas. Not that I’m tackling any searingly controversial topics, but you get the point.
The road ahead
Coming up to Christmas. I’m anticipating that my one article a week work rate might slip off a bit, but in saying that, I will have more time to write, so there’s a chance I will keep marching ahead as per usual.
As many will have picked up, I’ve just started a new job—which also might slow my work rate down in the months to come. But, this is another thing I’m monitoring. I tend to become more efficient when I’ve got less time, so I might be able to maintain this work rate. Again I’m going to leave this as an open question.
I like writing these newsletters, so as long as ideas for topics keep turning up in my head, I’ll keep writing them. It’s the writing for the writing’s sake that I’m staving off. But I’m not there yet, so I’ll keep going as we are.
Fiction:
Outside of this page I am working on my next season of fiction short stories—I’ve got seven completed first drafts, I’m aiming to complete twelve. Hopefully I will be able to start rolling those out at the beginning of February.
This time around I want to sit on each story for a while and time test each premise. I’m at a point where it doesn’t take me very long to write a story, but this new batch all currently feel like they’re a sitting a bit too cozily inside the bounds of my comfort zone.
My goal for this “season two” is to use each story as a tool for my development. I want to stretch my technique beyond where it currently sits and develop my style. That may mean scrapping some of this new batch entirely, it may mean dismantling them into something that’s worse than what they currently are. But in my experience, that’s often the only way to improve. We’ll see.
In terms of my progress with the novel— paying subscribers will get a more in depth run down of this, but the short answer is: we’ll see.
I guess that’s the theme of this article, and this page.
We’ll see.
Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to this page. I know it can be a bit scattered at times. But I enjoy doing it so I’m glad there’s at least a few people out there who click on these emails when I send them out.
And yes I know I don’t always put these out on time, but that’s usually a result of me sitting on a completed article and thinking. Do I really want to say this publicly.