FYI: Something Different

We are SO(rta) back.

I recently received an email from the blog service LiveJournal congratulating me on the 17th birthday of my second-ever blog that I started when I was 16-years-old. That blog is still live on the internet, sadly. It is cringe. And I regret to inform you that this particular newsletter will probably feel a bit more like that blog than any of the more polished stuff I’ve written in the last couple of years.

Since I stopped writing this newsletter twice a week back in September, I’ve been taking a bit of a break from regular writing, obviously.

In place of that, I’ve been learning how to be a good, present dad for three-year-old and three-month-old little girls and starting a new job as creative director at Moody Publishers. It’s been…a lot, as you can imagine.

On top of all that, of course, we had the holiday season, plenty of travel, and all sorts of related festivities. All of this is to say that my fiction-writing endeavors have been slower off the blocks than I hoped. This isn’t entirely surprising given everything I’ve listed above, but it’s frustrating nonetheless. I wrote a couple thousand words over the Christmas break, but that’s about as much progress as I’ve made since September.

A couple thousand words in a couple weeks may sound like a lot—and it probably is for some people—but I was regularly writing closer to three thousand words per week for this newsletter and around more like seven or eight thousand words per week during book writing seasons, so I feel like a sloth when it comes to writing as of late. And I’m pretty hard on myself about it, if you want to know. Susie, my wife, has told me not to be so hard on myself, but I figure if I’m no longer on Twitter, who will ever have the chance to criticize me but me? :-)

For Your Information

In addition to writing a couple thousand words over the holiday break, I also devoted some thinking to how I want to handle this newsletter moving forward.

The bad news is that I still really have no great ideas. The good news is, I purged a bunch of the bad ones and managed to find one that works.

Given that this newsletter will no longer be specifically about social media, internet culture, and related topics, I figured it needed a bit of a refresh, with a new name that gives me some flexibility to do whatever I want.

I went around and around on a new name for this newsletter. I’ve never liked naming things like this, so I asked a bunch of friends about their ideas. I threw away ideas that were too clever, but didn’t want to make it something as plain as “Chris Martin’s Newsletter.”

I also wanted to get a domain name again after getting rid of termsofservice.social, so finding a domain name that worked and also didn’t cost $5,000 was an important factor.

Turns out .fyi is a pretty cheap domain name extension and also works as a name for a newsletter that I intend to be quite broad in its content.

So the newsletter is now called FYI with Chris Martin and the URL is chrismartin.fyi.

It isn’t fancy, but I do think that the name sort of fits. “FYI” is often used to pass along information that doesn’t necessarily require action of the hearer so much as is it is meant for their awareness. And that reflects a bit of a shift in this newsletter for me. It will be less practical and more for your information or entertainment or encouragement.

What Will This Newsletter Be Now?

In the past, this newsletter has received my best writing energy except when I’ve been in the process of writing a book, in which it gets put in second place behind the book I’m working on.

Now, I will very much be treating this newsletter like a mad science laboratory. A test kitchen. Find another metaphor that communicates chaos and a lack of polish, and I’m sure it would fit.

Basically, it will be a sort of self-indulgent creative writing outlet for me to do some mental and creative calisthenics and very much secondary to other writing work I’m doing.

My primary writing energy and time right now needs to be on the fiction projects I’ve begun. But I still want and need an outlet to experiment, recommend things, and the like. And that’s what this newsletter will be.

In the past I wrote here twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, moving forward there will be no schedule, at least for the time being. This will be a “when I get around to it” sort of outlet.

What kind of stuff will you get here? Truly, I don’t know. Are you beginning to sense a theme? Here’s some stuff I’ve thought to try:

• I want to collect lists of links to articles, music, videos, etc., and share them every once in a while—not every week or anything, but just when the list is full enough to send, in my mind.

• I want to use a randomizer to randomly select a stock image and force myself to write something inspired by the image.

• I want to share bits and pieces of the fiction I’m writing.

• I want to share poetry or other lyrical kinds of writing I’m working on.

• I want to write about various topics from creativity, to writing, to social media(?), to whatever else.

All of this is to say: I have no idea what this newsletter will become, and that’s sort of the point.

I’m going to be spending some time working in this writing laboratory and instead of squirreling away the results in hidden digital folders or dusty notebooks, I’m giving you a window into the lab. Either to encourage you with the actual content of the writing or to maybe encourage you in whatever experimental, messy creative pursuits you’re trying yourself.

If you decide to stick around and not unsubscribe, there will likely be plenty of times when you read something here and think, “Why in the world does Chris think I care about that?” or “My word this is bizarre, why is he writing this?” And that’s kind of the point—there is no “plan” here. There is no “strategy.” Everything is made up and the points don’t matter. What was once a newsletter maybe a bit too beholden to fulfilling the needs of an audience will now be a free-wheeling, strategy-less funhouse full of odds and ends.

At least, for now anyway.

Thanks for sticking around,
Chris