…I didn’t point out that the first Les Pages aux Folles post went live in the first week of September, 2002. This week’s post is dated September 1, 2024. That means the web site has just concluded its 22nd year, and has now embarked upon its 23rd! That’s almost seven in dog years!
As the debacle of the 20th anniversary showed, this isn’t of interest to anybody other than me. But if anybody is interested in my creative process, it should be. Les Pages aux Folles is the playground out of which my novels and shorts stories developed. The Transdimensional Authority and the Alternate Reality News Service started here before they made it into my (relatively) more mainstream fiction.
Of equal importance is that the web site has been a place where I could experiment with form and voice. Some of the more experimental aspects of my novels and short stories were workshopped on the web site. And of course, my artistic voice was developed over many years of slow web site evolution.
Finally, I will point out that I learned a lot about writing from the experience of working on the web site. The obvious lesson was that I learned how to write quickly: you would be surprised how fast a weekly deadline approaches! And another! And another! (In total, 1,147 to date.) I also learned how to let go of articles, which includes forgiving myself if one week’s output isn’t up to my standards (and learning from the mistakes so I could do better in the future).
You may wonder why, having moved on to novels and short stories, I continue to update Les Pages aux Folles every week. There are, in fact, many reasons. One is that there is always something new to learn about writing, so I will always need the crucible of the web site to do so. For another thing, when I don’t have the spoons to work on a novel or short story, I can still manage to write a couple of articles under 1,000 words per week, which keeps me connected to writing and, I would argue, allows me to get back to writing longer forms more quickly than if I didn’t have it. Another is that having toiled at it for so long, it would be a shame to end the streak.
Never discount stubbornness.