Blog Update

First off, I'm going to start by thanking all my readers. I totally love you guys and I'm so glad so many people care about the things I talk about! I have really enjoyed all the writing you folks have shown me, too - so many great ideas out there, and they're really fun to articulate with.

I've been very pleased with the way my blog has been working with the structured system I've instituted, which very basically speaking works like this: a writing post on a Monday, a "Retro" post on a Tuesday, Worldbuilding Workshop on Wednesday, Culture Share on Thursday, and free choice on Fridays. What I'm finding right now, though, with the demands on my time at the end of the school year combined with being in the thick of novel-writing (not to mention my short stories!) is that I'm getting overloaded. Those of you who follow the Worldbuilding Workshop will have noticed that I didn't manage to get posts up the past two weeks, and I apologize. The fact is, those posts are the most intensive of all the posts I do, and generally take two hours or more to write. You may be able to see where I'm going...

I'm going to be keeping the general structure of the week on the blog, but I'm going to be shifting Worldbuilding Wednesday slightly away from the intensive analysis posts, and onto more worldbuilding topic-based posts. You are still welcome to submit to the Workshop, but when I get Workshop posts up will depend on when I can find the time to invest in them. I'm hoping this will mean less stress for me, and also mean that I can give content on both Wednesdays and Fridays without burning myself out early in the week.

I am of course always looking for new posts for The Writer's International Culture Share. I have had a great response from readers, and I have a few posts coming up here that I'm really excited about. If you have had an experience living outside your own culture, or if you feel the specific details of your local culture would be of interest to people around the world, please contact me!

I'm going to make a special request to all my American readers here. One of the things I noticed while living in Japan was how much American culture was seen as a monolith by my hosts. It's easy for people to draw conclusions from movies and the media that "America is like this" when of course we know it's full of complex and fascinating local cultures. So far I've seen a lot of entries from countries all over the world, but I'm hoping some of you will feel inspired to talk about your local culture, and illuminate the fine details of religion, folklore, and cultural practices of US regions as well as those of other countries. Look around you and see if you can find an inspiration, because I'd love to hear from you!

Thanks again for being awesome, all of you. TalkToYoUniverse continues to be one of the most worthwhile projects I've ever engaged in, and a lot of that is thanks to you.

Juliette