Sebald Beham: Prodigal Son Keeping his Swine (1538)

" … wherever they might lead."

By my count, I will be finishing my thirty-second series this week. I began writing these during a period of professional despair, when I wondered if I was or ever had been a writer. I figured that if I was a writer, I could damned well write, so I set about writing an essay every morning. By the end of the first quarter, I'd produced a book-length work. I continued the exercise, perhaps only a tad bit more convinced that I might be a writer after all. Now, the end of eight years later, I find myself finishing my thirty-second such series. Honestly, I cannot quickly even list the names of all of them in sequence. As usual, software problems, by which I probably mean 'user difficulties,' have resulted in a small black hole in 2022, so that I've temporarily lost access to a few quarters' stories. Nothing I can't recover with considerable frustrating effort.

As I've neared each ending, I've started questioning what I should be doing next. So far, I've justified continuing the pattern of producing some story each morning and compiling them into something like a book manuscript at the end. Managing the resulting manuscripts has become an overwhelming job involving too much copying and pasting, not to mention further proofreading that is perennially to-be completed. I doubt whether I'll ever manage to fully catch up to myself. Between the continually shifting context and other demands on my minuscule attention span, I acknowledge that much of this volume will, like most of my earlier writings, never make it into a coherent compilation.

Part of my questioning about what I should be doing next involves precisely this question. If I cannot find the time to properly compile my writings, what sense does it make for me to continue to produce fresh pieces? The sense does not come in compilation, for I created none of these pieces for the purpose of compiling them. No, I produced them for immediate consumption, for the moment in which I created them, because I was trying to prove to myself that I was or might have once been a writer. Writers write. Compiling rightfully belongs to some other profession. My writing's purpose was satisfied the moment I posted each day's result. The ultimate volume of the compiled stories might have never been much more than a vanity, for some self-satisfaction accompanies seeing a pile of paper I personally produced. I found it difficult to read through the resulting compilations, though, as if to confirm that the pieces were not intended to be compiled and read out of their original context.

I've now conclusively demonstrated to myself that I am or once was a writer. I rarely miss a morning writing. The practice seems so thoroughly integrated into who I am that I've even taken to introducing myself as a writer. I still fumble the follow-up questions. Who do you write for? Would I know anything you've written? I have not shepherded a single one of those almost thirty-two manuscripts into publication, even though at least two of the series focused on publishing. The fifth series, originally titled Clueless, is scheduled for publication later this year. It's in final copyediting now after much fussing and procrastinating on the part of its author. I am excited and baffled at the prospect of publishing again and I acknowledge that it's so damned expensive that I might never even attempt to do it again.

Am I then a writer who doesn't care to publish his works? I've proven successful playing the part of the field that doesn't rely upon publication to get by. I wrote one bestseller and became neither rich nor famous from the experience. I spent a lot more promoting that book than I ever made in royalties. I found that experience discouraging. Over time, I lost interest in finding a publisher that might be interested in promoting my writing. Instead, I carved out a niche practice where I publish to a private Facebook Group and Substack, as well as LinkedIn and BlueSky, although I don't fully understand the utility of BlueSky. I've learned that writing's not a viable way for me to make money, so I gave up aspiring to that end. I can leave that to the authors of the self-helpless books, the ones who feel compelled to tell others what to do. I never knew what to do except to keep writing.

What will I choose to do next? Oh, I will continue writing, if only because I am a writer and, above all else, writers write. My FollowingChapters will not involve retiring to some place where I'm a stranger to myself and my surroundings. I will continue inhabiting my most familiar territory, here, near the center of the universe, where gravity has the temerity to actually work right. I write travelogues from home. I intend to create a transition of sorts, though, from CHope stories, which have successfully reassured me through a dark and terrifying period, into FollowingChapters, wherever they might lead.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #CHope , #PureSchmaltz