Why I’m Cutting Back On My Posts

I started doing weekly posts for Chubby House Hubby, back in April 2018. The main reason for this, was as a diversion from the other weekly posts that I was writing on my Cancer Dad site. Because, while I feel that the Cancer Dad posts are important, they’re definitely intense. And often difficult for me to write. So I needed this site, where I could have fun and write freely. But times, they are a changing. Which is why I’ll be cutting back on my posts on here.

Part of the reason for this is that the posts that I’m making on Cancer Dad are no longer so harrowing to write. In fact, the most difficult post that I’ve written about my cancer, recently, was the one I did on here, summarising my Cancer Story. That one was pretty tough!

And I know that this might seem a strange thing to say, given that I’m in the middle of my fourth recurrence. Especially given that I don’t know what, if any, treatment I’ll be getting throughout the rest of the year. But the difficult part of writing Cancer Dad, was writing the historical posts. Where I was tying to relive all those experiences, to best explain to other cancer patients what they might expect.

But I’ve done all that, now.

I’m bang up to date. Anything that happens to me now, I can write about in real time. I can write the relevant post, while I’m feeling whatever it is, at the time, instead of having to relive it… Which is much easier.

As it stands, Cancer Dad is just ticking over. I do a monthly update, when I’m undergoing treatment. And I’ll explain any new procedures that I experience, when they happen: like the SABR I had in May. Additionally, I’m doing one post a month investigating whether certain things can cause cancer. And another monthly post about whether other things can cure cancer. Virtually all of these posts are sourced from questions that I’m being asked on Quora. And I’ll come back to Quora in a bit.

And, sure, there may well come another time when I’m having to write a lot of posts on Cancer Dad. But I’m not there at the moment.

What I’m getting at, is that despite my current ongoing concerns, my mind is a bit freer these days. So I’m going to focus on a longer term project…

I’m going to write a book.

Which means that I need to be cutting back on here.

I won’t be going away completely. I’m still anticipating that I’ll make random posts. They’ll just be shorter, between 300* and 500 words, and they won’t be on a timescale. A bit like the longer Facebook posts that I used to make.

[* The posts have to be at least 300 words long, because WordPress gets stroppy if they’re less than that…!]

Plus, there are a couple of my traditional posts that are still outstanding. Firstly, there’s the final port day of the Baltic Cruise: our visit to Gdansk. This is scheduled for 31st July and is already nearly completed. Yay, me!

Secondly, there’s the annual post on the current Greatest English Football Team of all time. Something that I’ve been doing since 2014, and this year, 2020, is going to see something unique… Not that I’ve any clue when I’m going to get that post out. Or even if this season will ever come to an end!

Still, with the exception of those two, there’s nothing else in the pipeline.

In fact, and as some of you may well have noticed, my recent posts have been wrapping things up a bit, in preparation for me cutting back my writing on here.

And, don’t get me wrong, I’ve really had fun writing my Chubby House Hubby posts. And I’m endlessly grateful to all of you, who have been kind enough to read these posts. It’s been nice, if somewhat unexpected, to have an audience. My only hope is that you understand my reasoning for cutting back, and are okay that I’m doing so. But, whatever happens, I want to say, thank you, for being here.

But it’s not like I’m going to stop writing. As of Monday, I’ll be working on my book. And, in an ideal world, I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts and ideas on here. Maybe even asking for input about what I should do with certain elements of the story. After all, you’re the people who are reading the things I’m already writing… Who better to ask for an opinion on the things I’ll be writing next?

And it’s surprising how much writing I’ve actually done, in these last two years. I’ve written 92 posts, on this site. I normally aim for around 2,000 words for a post, but quite often run over. So, let’s say the average length of these posts is 2,174 words. That means that I’ve written 200,000 words on this site. And I’ve done roughly the same on the Cancer Dad site.

In addition to which, I’ve answered over 1,000 questions on Quora. These answers are considerably shorter, with maybe an average word count of 100. But, that’s still another 100,000 words in total.

This means that, across my two websites and Quora, in the last two years I’ve written around 500,000 words. Half a million words!

Okay, I didn’t see that coming, when I started down this thread…

I was working on the principle that a good length for a novel is around 100,000 words (certainly, that’s how long my first attempt at a book ran to). And I’d guessed that I’d have written the equivalent of a couple of books, since 2014. But, the equivalent of 5 books is… unexpected.

It’s certainly useful to know.

It means that, even though I still need to be cutting back on here, I can definitely keep doing something. It also means that I can still allow myself some time on Quora, where I hope to top 5,000,000 answer views, by the end of the year. I’m currently on 4.4 million, so it’s undoubtedly achievable. And, seeing as the vast majority of the questions I answer on Quora are directly related to cancer, I can still feel that I’m helping people.

Which is important to me.

Because cutting back on most other things to write a book feels like a bit of an indulgence…

But then, writing a book is on my bucket list, so it’s also very important to me.

And, thanks to your continued interest in the posts that I’ve written on here, I’ve clearly had plenty of practice writing. You know, managing to get the words on the page. Which, according to a lot of the reading that I’ve done about how authors work, is the biggest hurdle to overcome… Actually getting in the habit of regular writing. And, thanks to this site, and you for reading the posts, that’s a habit I’m already in.

Which means that I should be off to a flying start.

Well, that’s about it, really. I mean, the point of this post is to explain that I’ll be cutting down. So it seems appropriate to start with the length of this post…

Thank you all for being here.

And I’ll speak to you all soon.