It’s that time of the year again, lol. Not a full hiatus, but articles and content for ATK will be drastically pulled back over the next like three months.
I’m not sure why late spring is the breaking point for me. We’re almost halfway through the year, but not quite there yet. Maybe it’s because of that, my subconscious starts taking inventory of what I’ve accomplished and what I haven’t. What’s working and what isn’t.
I say this every time I either take a break or scale things back. I love working on ATK, but it is incredibly time-consuming. It’s basically a second job (that I barely make any money from). And because of the time and effort I put into the blog, other things get put on the back burner.
Even when I step away from the blog, I still want to write. I’m a writer at heart. I’ve been wanting to focus on writing fiction, professionally, for a couple of years now. Even if it’s self-published. But I haven’t put the time aside to do it and I talk myself out of it, lol.
Over the last couple of days I’ve been reading and highlighting every other paragraph it feels of Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Oooo you can find it on the Internet Archive for free here if you’re interested in it. I’m almost halfway through it, and it’s both inspiring and helpful. It’s heavy on the memoir of Stephen King in the front half of the book, fair warning.
Between my increased reading over the last two years and examples of poorly written books I’ve come across, I feel like I’m finally ready to work on my stories.
I have a couple of book ideas I’ve had floating around in my head. I wrote them down into notes app, and after like two years of occasionally looking at them, and adding more story ideas to said list, I’m ready to write. I have the confidence.
I chose the three-month window in particular because of Stephen King. In his book he says, “Still, I believe the first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months, the length of a season. Any longer and—for me, at least—the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel”.
I think that’s more than enough time to get the first draft out when paired with his “ten pages a day, 2,000 words”. I can easily write 1,500-2,300 words in a day on one article. And I have 3–4 times a week in some cases for articles on ATK. This current article is about 800 words give or take.
So I’m officially going into book writer mode. I’m thinking of one article a week. Monthly faves will still be a thing. I can bulk write the #10YearsAgoToday articles, although I’m becoming more cautious of the ones I want to write. It’s disheartening to work so hard on those and only get maybe four views on it. But for updates, follow me on Twitter and Bluesky. I typically post a new article soon after I’ve completed it.
Definitely follow me on Bluesky because I’ve been posting more day-to-day like stuff on there. I have gone back to my magicgalash handle on both. I feel like going back to less brand specific @s will be beneficial down the road since ATK is no longer my main priority online. And I just hate managing multiple accounts if I don’t have to.
My ATK Instagram is the same, though. I did delete Threads. I hated it, lol. I don’t think anyone will even miss me on there, lmao. I’m still going back though old articles and changing the links out. Some articles are being deleted due to low traffic. But that just makes the blog as a whole look more concise. I’ll still be looking at emails sent to ash@ashtalkskpop.net and at ashtalkskpop@gmail.com for business opportunities.
So yeah, that’s the update! I’m working on a book, still going to be active on the blog… Oh, yeah the newsletter! I put a note on the signup about the status of the newsletter. But that’s going to be on hiatus as well.
I don’t think the weekly news roundup works for me. I’ve tried this format multiple times now, and while this is the most successful of the bunch, it’s still not creating the exact results I want. So I’ve gotta do some more research into what I should do with my email list. I think the next one I send out I’ll have a poll with an option for y’all to put suggestions in it.
Okay! That’s all I have to say for now. Next article will be on f5ve’s new album. Then probably SEVENTEEN afterwards.
See y’all next post!
Ash