Nulla Dies Sine Linea: I’ve been writing daily dispatches since 2012, this is now 12 years total. A long time, a short amount of time. This is 365 pages x 12. I have often thought that perhaps instead of writing 500 word dispatches, that I instead put my writerly energies into writing a book. I instead have kept on writing dispatches.

A dispatch was originally a war correspondent’s message from the field. I likened myself to this sort of correspondence because Alaska sometimes seems to me to be a far-flung outpost. Our living off the grid made it seem like an even further far-flung outpost.

A dispatch differs from a blog in that a blog is merely a daily recollection. My writings are more about actual events, one’s that contain considerable self-reflection.

I have missed on an average, one day a year in writing dispatches. So I have taken Donald Murray’s adage to heart.

From first dispatch

One reason for writing dispatches is that this is a form of what Art Young, a writing across the curriculum specialist, calls low stakes writing. I have from the onset, focused on generating ideas, and figuring out how to deal with writing related challenges. Now that last sentence is a good example. I have repeatedly said I use writing to problem solve. I now think dealing with writing related challenges is now more apt.

I’ve never had that many readers. I have not gone viral because it’s not good for my health. The lack of an ongoing readership has not kept me from writing, and I suppose that if I did have numerous readers that this would be high stakes writing, meaning it would take far longer to get anything on computer (we used to say paper) because I’d be attempting to write to this audience.

I am saddened by the fact that my sister Eleanor doesn’t read my dispatches. Pete sort of reads them because he posts them.

I have multiple interests, which coincide with differing audiences. I have my horse life. I have my writing life. I have my Bright Lights Book Project life. I muse about two of what are my primary sources of anxiety, going to the dentist and riding on airplanes. I don’t write a great deal about my dental history because few are interested in such things. I do try, when I do, to rise to the challenge and find way’s of keeping people’s attention.

Writing and putting one’s dispatches out there is far different than putting one’s ideas into a journal. I have always been an avid diarist/journal writer. I have saved most of these entries. I have a biographer, Christopher Benson; I am also his biographer. One of the other of us goes, the other is going to have a shitload of work ahead of themselves because we both have been amazingly prolific. Like me, Christopher has led a very interesting life but not published a great deal.

I do know that my writing and I as a writer are better off for my having been consistent in writing dispatches. You can’t do high stakes writing unless you do low stakes writing.

Next: 10. 1/10/24: Nulla Dies Sine Linea: Essay