Ruminations of an Old Goat

On February 9, 2009, I posted my first column on the Friday Challenge site. It was part one in what would become a 12 part series on writing comic books. When I finished that series, Bruce kindly turned me loose to write about anything I felt like writing and this column was born.

Over the last three years (where has the time gone?), I've written about all sorts of things but have tried to keep the topic at least tangentially associated with writing. I've written about mining history for ideas, how many times you can pull a rabbit out of a hat in a story, the problems with dropping political opinions into the middle of non-political stories, which emotions are easiest to evoke, which emotions are hardest to evoke, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I've written the odd movie review, ranted a few times, and dropped the periodic emotional purge pieces.

The problem is, I've pretty much run out of ideas for columns. Well, I guess that's not entirely true. It's probably more fair to say I've run out of ideas for columns I think those of you who frequent the Friday Challenge will want to read.

Normally, this is where the author regretfully tells his readers that he is hanging up his keyboard and getting out of the column writing business. But normalcy is not something I'm accused of very often and I see no reason to embrace it now. Instead of giving up the column, I'm going to ask for suggestions from you. These can be suggestions for individual columns, a series of columns, or an entirely new column going off in some direction I haven't yet considered. I'm not promising I'll use any or all of the suggestions, but I will consider them. Even if I don't use a suggestion, it may lead me off in a new direction.

So, please use the comments and offer suggestions -- any suggestions. Help me keep writing the column by letting me know what you would like to read about in the column.

Go. Comment. The Old Goat is depending on you!