about the mutable

Welcome, reader, to the mutable.

the mutable is, presently, a repository for my prose and poetry writing as I try to make the shift from a freelance tutor, editor and designer to my dream as a full-time creative. As time goes on, I hope to expand my works into the realms of music, drawing, painting, game design and more. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy my work as much as I love creating it.

As you can see, at the moment the mutable is a simple Blogger page. This is because I've elected to build my website by hand from the bottom up, which means I'm having to take the time to immerse myself in the back-end of development in a way my casual web design hobby has never entailed before. Up until recently, I have used that as an excuse to hide my writing, but for reasons discussed in my primary blog--which I have also shirked--I committed to publishing my output this week no matter what. I am committed to the same every week from here on out, though analytics should help me to determine the ideal publication time eventually. I will continue to sneak time in throughout my days to learn what I need to in order to build the site I want, the way I want, at which point I will port all my content over to it. Until then, I need to rebuild the habit of regular writing.

The obvious question, given that I'm looking to make my living writing, is: why publish this stuff on a free blog? The first and most relevant one is that doing so allows me to realistically set a high-frequency deadline for myself to build my habit of writing back up. If I were to limit myself to only publishing via e-books, I would need to factor in the market limitations of them--specifically that people are looking for each item to have a great deal of content, 50,000+ words. Assuming I maintained a pace of 25,000 words per week, which is extremely taxing even without having a separate job, and likely to produce bad writing unless very carefully worked up towards, I'd still only be publishing something every two weeks. If I'm making the content freely available, I can force myself to publish every week because I know the volume won't have a meaningful impact on its distribution.

Second, that free distribution can help generate exposure. If I were an established author and could rely on a preexisting fanbase to seek out my new works, I could afford to only distribute my work in a paid format. But the moment you put a price tag on your week, you're instantly competing with every other possible option, and as an unknown, there's only so much a small sample of my work can do to distinguish it from every other person's work. Making my work freely gives people a chance to see what I can do and then decide whether or not to pass on the word about me, review my work, or purchase something to support me. With the advent of Patreon, it is also a simple matter for people who like my writing to elect to support it directly.

Third and finally, the flexibility provided by this model is wonderful. My interests are eclectic both across genre and media. Sometimes I want to write low fantasy novels, other times a science-fiction short, here a dramatic novella, there an abstract poem; as I said before, I'm also aiming to expand into other art forms beyond writing. By making my content freely available, I can encourage people to explore things that might not have, and I can also take my time creating what I want, at a pace that satisfies me.

Thank you once again for checking out the mutable, and I hope you enjoy your stay.

~L