Balckwell Rising!

It’s December, which is about as good a time as any to reflect on the year gone by and preflect on the year to come. As we did last year, I will separate out the myriad activities/productions that make up the Balckwell Online Entity, and for each one, tell you what’s been going on, as well as what’s going to go on.

I mean, what else am I going to do? I’ve got to do something!

BALCKWELL’S BOOKS

Frequent listeners may have noticed that I haven’t published an episode of Balckwell’s Books in several months. The last Big Episode was Nostromo back in August, and the last episode of any sort was Gaza Writes Back in October. The long and short of it is that I got burnt out on doing the show. I was trying to put out a Big Scripted Episode every month, which meant reading the book, taking notes, outlining, writing a 6,000+ word script, editing, plus recording and editing. That turned out to be a bit much, and while I was, for the most part, able to do it — although most episodes were late — it was eating up a lot of my writing time. In fact, glancing at the statistics, almost half of my writing this year was devoted to scripts for Balckwell’s Books.

I was planning for my next episode after Nostromo to be Pierre, or the Ambiguities by Herman Melville, and I had re-read the book for that purpose, taken a bunch of notes, outlined the whole thing and even written the intro when I decided I needed to take a break from the show. Over the last couple months I’ve attempted to jump back into that project, and the momentum is completely gone, to the point where I have to consult my notes to remember the names of major characters, so I think I might just have to move on to something else. That book is difficult to write about because it’s so strange, unique, unrecognized and misunderstood all in ways that are difficult to communicate.

I would like to start producing episodes again in January, probably starting with a different book, and likely with a leaner schedule and shorter episodes. I don’t know where I got the idea that each episode needed to be more than an hour long anyway. I still believe in the show; I just need to find a different way to do it.

Looking back, I think the three-part series about Dream of the Red Chamber aka Dream of Red Mansions aka Story of the Stone are my favourite episodes I produced this year. I put a lot of time and effort into exploring that book in as much detail as I could, and feel like I succeeded in saying something unique about it that I’d never seen expressed in English. The Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus episode also holds a special place for me, because I felt I was able to take a different approach to the story than many other writers.

THE ESSAYS (BALCKWELL RISING)

I published a new essay on my website every other Thursday for the entire year of 2023. I’m proud of that! I didn’t even cheat and post old essays that often. (Only twice, in fact.) So that’s twenty-two (so far) unique pieces of writing covering a wide variety of topics, only one of which was inspired by getting mad about something I saw online, and to be fair to me, that was more about getting mad about everything I saw online, and then getting mad at myself for being mad about that.

I like most of those essays. There’s only one that I consider something of a failure — I won’t tell you which one — and that’s only because I wish I had structured it a little better. If I had to pick favourites, I’d say the first one of the year, “Neil Young’s Mesoamerica,” felt good. I also like “Smoke and Mirrors,” and not only because it made several people worry about my mental health. Upon re-reading, I realize that I didn’t quite emphasize the rarity of the phenomena I was describing, but that only increased its effectiveness.

I think I will stick to the same schedule for next year. I like publishing on Thursday, even though Friday would undoubtedly be better. The essays will be just as eclectic a mix of personal reflections, philosophical nonsense, and literary bumblings, and I have no plan to impose any more regimentation regarding them than I have in the past.

THE NOVELS (ALSO, OTHER FICTIONS)

Although I did publish my first novel this year — Only in Dreams — I have to consider 2023 something of a failure when it comes to novel writing. I was not able to make as much progress on my second novel as I would have liked, as I got stuck many times, and then failed to un-stuck myself due to being too overwhelmed by Balckwell’s Books. Next year, I would like to focus a lot more on Blackwell’s Books than Balckwell’s Books, if you know what I mean.

I know what I’m doing with this second book; I just need to do it. Every time I look at it, I’m surprised by how close to completion it actually is. I just need one or two more big ideas and four or five more small ideas. Then, I just need to re-write it a couple times, which is the easy part. Forget what anyone tells you: the first draft is the hardest draft. That’s the draft where you have to actually come up with everything. After that, you’re just having fun with it.

I think I might write some short stories next year as well. I probably won’t post them here, because I don’t think a website/e-mail newsletter is the right place for short stories. It just doesn’t feel right. If I like them, I will publish them as a book. However, if we choose to predict the future using the past, odds are that I won’t like them, and then that’ll be that!

Objective Number One is to finish the next novel — working title(s): Knights, Snails, and Plastic Boogie (or, Pierre & The Ambiguities) — and then let my mind roam free as I search for a novel to write after that. Several ideas are sitting somewhere deep in the back-pantry of my brain, but whether any of those are in fact possible for a human being to write remains to be seen. I have been reading too much Jorge Luis Borges, whose favourite hobby is inventing decidedly un-possible novels, and it’s starting to rub off on me.

BALCKWELL ARCHIVES

I have plans to construct a new website in the near future. This website will house all my writings I’ve ever published online across the myriad secret and stupid websites I’ve maintained throughout my life. I don’t consider many of these writings particularly good, but I like the idea of archiving the progression from then to now. My favourite thing to do online has always been to read the archives of long-running websites, an activity which has become more and more difficult as the internet has aged. Well-maintained archives are harder and harder to find as modern website design heavily emphasizes the new over the old.

For example, the website I currently use to host this website/newsletter, Substack, has a frankly terrible archive page. I think that’s quite a shame, because I’ve now posted quite a lot of writing here, and there’s really no good way to go back and see it. So, it’s likely that I will migrate everything to somewhere new (or even old) in the near future. For those who read these as e-mails: don’t worry, everything will remain essentially the same. You won’t have to do anything. It’s me that will have to do something. I’ll have to do a lot of things, actually, which is why I’ve barely started on this whole initiative despite having the idea over a month ago.

But I strongly believe in the value of having my own darned website that’s just all my stuff and nothing else, where my work isn’t just floating around on some sort of feed surrounded by what I consider some of the most inane nonsense ever conceived by man. Forgive me for being old-fashioned or perhaps even self-important, but having news, personal diaries, jokes, memes, skits, amateur opinions, professional opinions, etc. all swimming together on the same website devalues and distorts all of it, and is also just a little confusing! I say: each thing to its own place. And in the spirit of that belief, I am going to move myself to my own place, where no one has to come see me if they don’t want to, but if they do, they know exactly what they’re in for.

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On a more personal note, I am planning to move to a new city next year, which will at the very least mean that I’ll have a different view outside my window. I don’t directly reference the events of my life too much in these essays, but it’s hard to imagine the change in locale won’t influence me somewhat. Perhaps it will give me some new ideas, and we’ll see some shifts in what goes on here. Maybe I’ll get a bit gloomy, and then we can explore the gloomier side of life. Who’s to say?

I hope you continue to stick with me throughout the next year and perhaps longer than that, as I don’t have any plans to stop doing what I’m doing. If you’ve read and enjoyed any of my work over the past year: congratulations, and thank you. We’re doing our best over here.

And thus we say:

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BALCKWELL RISING!!!!!