October Updates
October may be my favorite month, when the mild temperatures coming out of summer turn into cooler fall air, when the leaves start falling and early sunsets bask the evening sky in a warm glow. Lately I’m enjoying walks around 530 or 6pm, when the sun is setting and day turns to dusk. It’s a magical time, and, for me, an inspiring time. I recall making the same walks last year at this time and being equally inspired. In fact, the changing of seasons is the only event which truly demonstrates the passage of each year, when summer gives way to fall and winter before we begin a new year. October conjures up it’s own holiday, halloween, which precedes the holiday season of Novemeber and December.
Some current and ongoing project updates. Last month I got back into writing my fictional project but realized that if I’m going to write science fiction, I should probably read some! So I picked up a bunch of sci-fi novels. I read Roadside Picnic, which totally captivated me. I’m still working on a substack blog post analyzing my thoughts on the novel, though this piece has overtaken other work and I haven’t actually done any work on my fictional project. In the meantime, I’m also reading War of the Worlds, the H.G. Well’s classic, which I realize has inspired so many books and movies. I consider reading these novels an important part of the research for my fictional project and though I may not be writing for that project, I’m still working on it to some degree.
Regarding Substack, I’m still committed to working on some longer form blog posts. I suppose giving myself until the end of the year to finish any of them would be a more accurate time estimation, since it’s taken me nearly a month to read and then write the post on Roadside Picnic. In addition to publishing posts related to writing my fictional project, like Roadside Picnic, I want to write about New York City - Alley Pond Park, Bushwick & Ridgewood history, and much more.
Now that I’m feeling more confident writing blogs for my Substack audience, I think I could start to post more personal writing here. Thoughtful, contemplative, and even experimental writing. Writing which I’m not yet confident enough to post to Substack. Shifting blog posts to Substack rather than posting here will motivate me to actually finish them!
In addition to my writing projects over the past month, I’ve become a bit more involved with oral history interviews lately. This month I’m scheduled for seven interviews - a record - though I’m sure some participants will not show to their interviews. I was scheduled for three just last week, but only one of the three went forward. I was asked by the volunteer coordinator of the project to give some interview tips at a training session this evening. After my morning interview this past Saturday, I spent a few hours researching and reading some oral history materials which I’ve looked to for guidance in the past and together with some tips I’ve developed on my own, I made a list of six bullets of oral history interview tips. I’m looking forward to presenting them to the future volunteers tonight during the training session. Working on this training material has given me ideas for a few substack blogs on oral history.
As always, the difficult part is juggling projects while completing old ones and working on new ones but I am not in a rush - everything is going according to plan, although a bit slower than anticipated.
By the end of the month, I hope to have the Roadside Picnic post completed; I’ll have finished War of the Worlds, which will no doubt prompt it’s own blog post; my busy oral history schedule will lead to some related content on Substack; and in my free time, I’ll still be working on my fictional project and writing here.
Until next time,
Keith.
