Ode to Abandoned Thoughts
This is a reflection on some of the newsletters you'll never get to see, and why I abandoned them.
Imagine if I could break into Greek poetry suddenly and magnificently. I’d hammer out these deep, provocative words that tell you something about me, something about you, and about a truth that we all too often overlook: words can’t be wrong, there’s just poor choices.
Okay, I’m paraphrasing the Dan Potthast song, French Canada. But it seems apropos with my thoughts on writing lately. If you didn’t read Priority: Heavy Metal, you may have missed that I recently wrote two pieces of fiction for Heavy Metal Magazine. I’m inclined to believe that in those stories I put together some top notch work. They didn’t start as good and polished as they ended. In fact, both stories started as trainwrecks that needed revisions and new drafts. One of them was almost gutted entirely before I ever sent it to the editor. (If you want to read more about that, I have a supplemental article on Patreon.)
While I’m happy both stories found a form that made them worth publishing, I have written tons of things that get abandoned. I have a folder in my Google Drive called Comics/Cartoons/Show Pitches. It’s a veritable wasteland of documents that barely made it a few lines. Some are folders with a title and nothing in them. It’s a shame that ideas can feel promising enough to start, and before I know it, I haven’t touched them in fifteen years.
When I sit down to work on entries to this newsletter, I often have some subject picking at my brain that launches me into what I hope is a constructive diatribe. However, there are more Mondays than I care to admit that start with me scratching my head, desperate for a thought. That wasn’t the case this morning. I found inspiration looking at my Substack dashboard. I have three (mostly) fully written articles that linger in my drafts. All three could fill in a week and give me some breathing room to produce the next best entry. But, I’ve never published any of them, and I don’t see a release date on the horizon.
These three articles are tentatively titled: A Will to Believe, Flexing With Our Communities, and I Stole My Neighbor’s Lawnmower. What’s wrong with these articles? I poked through them this morning to perform a creative autopsy on what prevented their publication. Consider this a-poetic ode a report on what felt like good ideas riddled with poor choices.
A Will to Believe
A Will to Believe was a reflection on skepticism, and my podcast Fables of Our Deconstruction. I wanted to create a conversation about my concerns that subjects like the paranormal, or conspiracy theories, that feel like great story ideas yet leave me worried we’re encouraging true believers that we’re onto something real. Film, books, and comics have often inspired those who believe most anything to believe that their stories are somehow true. It’s happening right now with Spielberg’s Disclosure Day. In this abandoned newsletter, I wanted to meditate on what responsibility I have as a skeptical creator when making fantastical stories.
Why didn’t A Will to Believe reach publication? At the time that I wrote it, I had been creating several skeptical entries. While I find critical thinking and criticism incredibly important and engaging, my readership stats show that isn’t always the case for all of you. Take that in hand with an extra layer of negativity and cynicism that creeps through my word choice and I just couldn’t bring myself to publish it. I didn’t want to rework it, or stare at it anymore. But, I thought that it was a good enough idea to come back to… someday… maybe.
Flexing With Our Communities
This article could barely be called an article. It’s two unfinished paragraphs. I think I thought the words just sucked. You know, poor choices. I was traveling through the plains states and Colorado for a month in 2024 and these two paragraphs were written at that time. I was struggling to make a dime. My time on the road was illuminating and exciting, but it was incredibly expensive. I was struggling to make ends meet at every single event I did on that excursion. Flexing With Our Communities aimed to be an argument that we need to make the creative work our audience demands from us. That, even though I feel otherwise, if we’re going to do fan shows we have to have fan art. Additionally, we need to find everyone tuning in and supporting us and try to create everything precisely for them.
I don’t know what I published in lieu of this article. I feel it was abandoned because it felt lost and structureless. I do think there’s some amount of leaning into what our fans and viewers want, but I think it’s more nuanced than that. I’d rather ask, “what can we do to convince our fans and readers that they do want what we have to offer?” Maybe those two paragraphs could come back someday? For now, they linger.
I Stole My Neighbor’s Lawnmower
This was the most work I ever put into an article that was never published. I had the title figured out before I had words written. I wanted something catchy and clickbait-y for my latest takedown of generative AI. At the time, I was living in Nevada, Iowa, and just about every small business in town was shoveling out slop event posters and hanging them around town. Awful, mangled-fingered, AI trash became the quickest avenue to spreading word. These businesses would risk going out of business if someone stole from them, but they didn’t seem to care about, or understand, the inherent theft involved in generative AI. Furthermore, I was one of the only creative businesses registered through their Mainstreet (a Chamber of Commerce alternative), yet they still claimed there was no one who could do creative work.
As you can probably tell, I was livid. I tried crafting a story in which I admitted to stealing my neighbor’s lawnmower. I wanted the story to be an allegory for all the hard work I could make stolen assets do for me. That, with the right justification, I could argue that I never stole anything in the first place. This article featured storytelling and reality paired with pictures of the slop posted all over town. I had Cathryn edit it, and we tried to narrow it down to something excellent. But, my lawnmower allegory was thin and everything felt disorganized. We agreed I couldn’t create a real, scathing takedown if it wasn’t well written.
I Stole My Neighbor’s Lawnmower is a title I stare at regularly. It was a meaningful criticism that never made it out of drafts. Now, nearly three years later, it feels too late to criticize a community I no longer live in. The wind has been taken from my sails.
None of these abandoned articles are unique. I have a lot of thoughts that get left behind. Some get deleted, or edited, or revised. Others, like these, get left as markers of things I couldn’t finish. I’m always cautious that I may be telegraphing the idea that I have it all figured out. I rarely know if what I’m doing is good or working. I know a lot of words, and I love learning and using new ones. However, in the case of my abandoned thoughts, they’re all just poor choices.