hope for the writing bug

Over at Brothers Grinn, we've slowly started to reverse our downward movement in subscribers. We were at 1100 or so before the big hiatus, and we're now in the low 700s. That's more than a third of our readership, which isn't too surprising even if it is moderately depressing.
I'm hoping we can start to hit a stride and get some momentum again, since when we do, we're usually pretty funny, and start to pick up new readers. The way to do that, based on our previous experience, is to get the mailings going with something approaching regularity, with some regularly identified, recurring elements ... and wait for people on mailing lists and web sites to start noticing us again and pointing us out to everyone.

I think we have a potentially much higher readership than this, although if memory serves, the membership list started taking small dips followed by big surges around the time we reached 900, suggesting that that's our first natural plateau, and that if we can really push past that, we'll get hordes more through viral marketing.

Natasha had some touching words for me the other day, that she wants to see me doing more writing as well, and publishing it for money. What was touching was that she made it clear that she really believes me as a writer, and considers me a better writer than several other people we know who are already published. I had no idea she cared that much, not about the money but about the writing.

Things like that inspire me. I'm hoping we can set aside some time on a regular basis during the evening for me to write, whether Brothers Grinn stuff, A Messy Faith or (more importantly) the book. I'm also hoping I can formally collect some of the Brothers Grinn stuff we've written and try submitting it to a publisher. (That was one of my incentives for restarting this.)