#31: Scaling Back | Dustin Bloom

November 6, 2026

#31: Scaling Back

Welcome to the last day of Allhallowtide! This blog post will be an homage to what I'm currently working on, and why I'm scaling back blog posts to once a month.

Now, I'd love to keep doing weekly blog posts. I've been consistent with it since April 24th, and I always have something interesting I could talk about for the week. Unfortunately, as much as I want to keep making blog posts, I've been getting a lack of email sign ups, and these posts take me a lot of effort to create. Furthermore, the best publicity is yet to come, and I know that with my rich resources of blog posts, that it'll be only a matter of time before more and more begin subscribing to the blog. Until then, this has to take a backseat to my priority list.

But why?

In short, I'm working heavily on this second novel, and I'm trying to make it significantly more dynamic and fun than the first. To do that, I need far more focus on the novel and concentration than I do online or blog posts. I'm already spread thin with time by working full time and trying to pursue a writing career, and I can't be everywhere at once. The blog posts don't necessarily inspire me the same way the story of this next book does. In fact, I've been consistently writing for hours on end with multiple sessions per day. As I'm writing this, my second novel has nearly 106,000 words for its first draft. Naturally, whatever final word count I come up with will be cut by at least 10% by the time it's finished. I'm fully expecting this second novel to be longer than my first, but it should be easier to write and edit than the first since I know what I'm doing this time around.

In short, my writing focus has been on the stories themselves. As much as I want to keep telling the world what I'm up to, I'd rather dedicate my time to my work than to a media presence. I'm excited to be writing this new book with such clarity and happiness, and I hope that it'll be even better than the first book! The only way I can ensure that'll happen is if I stay on course. After all, I didn't have a blog post when I made the first draft of my debut novel, and I was successful in creating it. I'll still keep you updated now and then, but I feel like I shouldn't waste your time. I'll give you major progress updates or announce when certain relevant things are going on. This is why I feel it is best to scale this down to once a month. Gives everyone something to look forward to (maybe the first Friday of every month?), and I can say exactly what's going on. I hope that by December 4, I'll at least have 150,000 words for this draft. That doesn't even mean that it has to be a completed novel. As much of a completionist as I am, I'll keep writing until I feel that the novel, the story, is concluded in the right way.

I hope you stick around for the content, for the second book, and for more to come. I love writing, and I do it every single day in the morning. For as long as I have the freedom to, I will continue to make books because I genuinely love doing it. Thank you all for sticking around with me, and I hope to impress you with the second book!

All the best,

Dustin