Since it’s now nine years since I started this blog in the summer of 2008, the truth can be told about its name. Blotter Paper, while it does carry literary connotations (in college I wrote the police blotter, for instance) was primarily a reference to my favorite drug at the time: LSD.

Now that I’m seven years sober, I feel less connected to that name, and less connected to blogging about the travails of the new writer life. I changed over the name to THE WAR ON LONELINESS and revamped the site’s look because, well, I just wanted a change.

For awhile I thought I’d blog exclusively about friendship-making topics, but I’ve come to realize over these past few weeks that I don’t really want to do that either. I don’t think my blog is every _really_ going to change. Or, rather, its change is gonna be continual. Once upon a time the blog was mostly about books, but I eventually grew tired of that. Who knows what it’ll be about in a year or two or three? I’ve also given up on the idea that this blog will ever have a huge audience. If it happens, then it happens, but I’m not convinced it ever will.

However I do appreciate the thousands of followers and fans that this blog _does_ have, and I also appreciate the community and the opportunities it’s brought to me. At times it’s seemed like a burden, but for the last few weeks, when I haven’t really been posting, I’ve also missed it. So from now on I’m going to post regularly, but perhaps less systematically in the past (I do have _many_ more WAR ON LONELINESS posts coming up though).

Anyways that is what’s happening here.

In me-related news, I’ve been writing a lot of short stories lately (seven in the last two months). After years of frustration with myself over what I am or am not writing, I’ve started just sitting down at the keyboard and seeing what comes out. And my new stories have already started picking up rejections, so really nothing’s changed from this blog’s first days…