This blog has been a blog of many content themes over the decade and a few years it has existed. For topics, it’s a jack of all trades sort of blog, like its author, me, in life. As I embrace the start of my two year journey with writing on January 1, 2021, so, too, shall this blog go forth. As of that date, I hope to have almost daily posts where the goal is about the writing, regardless of topic, for which there will be a wider variety than ever before to keep its jack of all trades topic identity.

Most of the writing starting next year will be short, in the range of 500-1000 words, and of a contemplative nature as I share thoughts and feelings on whatever is on my mind and/or heart that day. This notice to readers would be a good sample of the writing that will be coming. Each post will be my “practice” writing for the day, part of the “deliberate practice” I will do to learn and finesse the writing craft, but not the “good” writing I will be doing after posting. Consider the posted content my “warm-up” writing, if you will, though I am neither intending nor allowing it to be what I would consider “crappy”. I just won’t be editing it as heavily as my good writing, nor will I go deeply enough into details to make any post really long, though you can still expect deep content every now and then from deep thoughts shared.

In addition to a variety of topics, I will also be trying out a variety of writing styles, albeit far less variety than topics as there aren’t that many reader friendly writing styles. While most will be in first person narrative like you are reading here, there will be interview style pieces, second voice, third voice, mixed with a variety of purposes from reflection to attack, among other styles. Experimentation will be as key as repetition once I find a few styles that really resonate with me, and/or at which I want to improve. A few will even be actual writing exercises I will come across in my learning, whether from several excellent books on writing I had purchased long ago but never fully dedicated the time to, or from resources I will get from joining the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

My ultimate goal in this two-year writing journey will be to produce a memoir of my experience growing up in Canada, specifically Halifax, Nova Scotia, as a Vietnamese child refugee. My reasons for doing that are many and deserve at least one post of its own, so I won’t discuss it here. Along the way, I will also enter, and hopefully succeed at, a few dozen writing competitions and opportunities to publish. I will also write and self-publish a handful of “smart phone” books, or Kindle coffee table books, as I like to call them, now that I had taught myself how to self-publish on Amazon and Smashwords. These will be innovatively designed books meant to provide a different user experience to readers than either typical e-books or coffee table books. An example would be the one I self-published last August called Stars I Put in my Sky to Steer By. Download the free sample and see what I mean with the solitary quote pages.

As for the books I plan to self-publish will be about, I’ll just say I hope I will self-publish more books under my name than under a pen name. That won’t be for reasons of controversial content, or to protect me from anyone. It’ll just the smart thing to do, as you will see if you follow this blog and read about them in future posts reflecting on my choice to use pen names as authors for some of those books. In the meanwhile, I hope you’ll enjoy the writing that will be shared here starting in 2021, organized via this categorical link for writing.

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Please click here for more writings from my 2021 writing journey.