More History

January 2009, and I mean we are talking months ago here. This is recent past. I was trying to do something differently, but it was pretty clear that I didn't know what: I stopped on the street to take people's picture (I forgot to tell them not to smile), I finished serials, I wrote scenes and stories and essays. Things genuinely improved around here.

I reached a slight peak in creativity around March and April. My stories were about all sorts of ideas that I'd always wanted to write down, and I was finally finding that I had a voice to do it with. Of note were The Key Card and I'll Change For You, two reader favorites.

The second of these stories, though, was the last before a creativity dry spell that lasted pretty solidly through the summer. May saw the creation of my first and only "Guest Week" series, which further facilitated my not having ideas, and in July I wrote three posts total - a number I hadn't been down to for nearly a year and a half (though one of these posts was The Kayak Bandits, a personal favorite).

August marked a slight improvement, featuring the first of my puns (the trapezoid one doesn't count). Besides that, August had a nice photograph, a Frisbee-related pantoum, and not much else.

This terrible period culminated in September, when I posted about the frustration I felt about my lack of ideas, and then, days later, I sat down and wrote Ball Golf, a fan favorite for those willing to read the whole damned thing. The ball was rolling again. The puns kept coming, and I managed six posts in October and another six in November. The stress of college applications forced my December count down to two, rounding us off with 75 posts for the whole year - my lowest ever. 2009 wasn't a great year number-wise, but I like to think I grew in other, less tangible ways. I was ready for 2010 and the finale of the thrilling conclusion of A HISTORY OF MOSTLY HARMLESS, to arrive later this week.