I Have Some Questions for You

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I’ve spent the last couple of days doing something I’m occasionally terrible at.

Nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. I visited a friend. I relaxed. I thought. Most importantly, I stepped away from the desk long enough to look at some things without immediately trying to fix them.

One of those things was Memoirs of Madness.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what MoM is from this side of the keyboard. Tonight, I’d like to hear what it is from yours.

So, I have a few questions.

You don’t have to answer all of them. Pick one. Pick three. Answer every damn one if you’re feeling ambitious.

When you visit Memoirs of Madness, what do you come here for?

What feature or type of post do you look forward to most?

Is there something I publish that you usually skip?
You won’t hurt my feelings. Useful truth beats polite bullshit.

Is there something I’ve done in the past that you wish I’d do more often?

Do you enjoy the variety here, or does MoM sometimes feel like too many different things competing for your attention?

When you think about Memoirs of Madness, what is the first thing that comes to mind?

And here’s the question I’m probably most interested in:

If one part of MoM disappeared tomorrow, what would you genuinely miss?

I’m not asking because I’ve decided to tear the place apart.

I’m asking because sometimes you can spend so much time building something that you stop seeing what other people see when they walk through the door.

I know what I think Memoirs of Madness is.

I’d like to know what it has become to you.

Don’t worry about giving me the “right” answer.

Give me the useful one.

I’m listening.

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13 thoughts on “I Have Some Questions for You”

  1. Difficult to answer, really. Your presence here in our little corner of WP, is good to have. Another mind, another soul with words and thoughts to share

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    1. Thank you, Joey. I think that’s one of the things I value most about this strange little corner we’ve built—the exchange of thoughts between people who may see the world completely differently. Sometimes the conversation that follows the writing becomes just as important as the piece itself. I’m glad you’re here adding your voice to it.

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    1. Thanks Di. This actually helped more than you might realize. I’ve wondered whether the mixture of fiction, humor, reflection, art, and whatever other madness wanders through here makes the place difficult to follow. Hearing that the variety is part of what you enjoy gives me something worth thinking about. Maybe the mixture isn’t something I need to fix. Maybe that’s simply what Memoirs of Madness is.

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  3. Interesting questions, Mangus. I’m not sure it’s our place to answer them, though, and I can’t say exactly why. Maybe it’s because you’ve created a world, and we are lucky to be visitors.

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    1. Ted, that line about creating a world stuck with me. I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about what belongs where as the different parts of the Mangus Khan Universe continue to grow, and I may have been thinking too much about rooms and not enough about the people walking through them. Your comment helped shift my perspective a little. Maybe I don’t need everything in one room. I just need to make sure nobody needs a damn map and a compass to find their way around. Thank you, my friend.

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      1. I think all of us here are engaged in a pretty esoteric, you might even say ‘dark’ art. I think there are no right or wrong answers (so long as we treat one another with respect) and I think we are all learning as we go.

        By far the most important thing that has happened is the increase in ability we’ve been given to communicate ourselves to the furthest reaches. I think our job is to continue to write and to read.

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      2. I agree, Ted. Maybe that’s the part we sometimes lose sight of while worrying about platforms, numbers, algorithms, and whether anybody is paying attention.

        We have the ability to put a thought into words, send it across the world, and have it land in the mind of someone we may never meet. They bring their own life to it, respond, and sometimes send us away thinking differently than we did before.

        That’s a hell of a thing when you really stop and consider it.

        So perhaps the job really is that simple: keep writing, keep reading, keep talking to one another—and try not to become so damn clever about the machinery that we forget why we came here in the first place.

        Thank you, my friend.

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    1. Thank you, Michael. That’s something I care deeply about in my writing. I want you to see the room, feel the shadows, hear what’s happening just outside the frame—not simply read what happened. If the words are putting images in your head, then I’m doing something right.

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