Scheduling Changes

Quality Over Quantity (Plus Some New Series)

(4 min read) A short update on why you will be hearing (slightly) less from me for a while, and what to expect in terms of schedules and subjects for the rest of this year.

A good place to write (and surf): the Azuero peninsula (Panama).

I’ve been writing furiously this year — an average of well over 5,000 words and 50+ edited photos each and every week across my three publications.

That was sustainable, though barely, when I was living on a remote surf beach in Panama (as I have been since January, as I will for the first eight months next year). Read, write, surf, repeat — not a bad daily rhythm.

However, I am going to be traveling from the start of September through the end of this year, and won’t be able to keep up that pace.

I will maintain my schedule of one chapter (and related notes) per week for my serialized speculative fiction at Implicate Orders — and thus that novel will indeed be finished in February 2026, as originally planned.

However, at The Gothic World and Both/And, I will be cutting my output roughly in half. In addition to ensuring quality while I do things other than write, this will also allow me to widen the scope of subjects and themes.

I describe in detail the changes I am making below, but if you just want the TL;DR it is this:

The Gothic World: The countdown will switch to bi-weekly, and two new series will be introduced this year (and developed next year).

Both/And: Museum Mondays will switch to bi-weekly, and I will use the time which that opens up to do some more philosophically-inclined history essays.

St Peter’s Church, Leuven (Belgium)

The Gothic World

On the first of January, I announced my countdown series The Fifty Greatest Works of Gothic, and stated that “every Saturday over the course of 2025, I will be counting down the fifty greatest works of Gothic architecture with a photo essay.”

However, starting in September I am going to shift the series to bi-weekly. So you will still get #17 this Saturday, but then it’ll be 13 September before #16 hits your inbox. (If this upsets you and you want your money back, talk with management ;).)

I could probably keep up the weekly schedule, but I’d rather maintain a high quality level than hit an artificial deadline. This is especially so because as we get into the top twenty there is often much to discuss and show in detail. So instead of ending in December as originally planned, the series will end in April.

I also have two additional Gothic series planned for 2026 — I will publish the introductory posts for each later this year, and begin them in earnest at the start of next year. I’ve documented over 350 Gothic buildings in total, so there are plenty of additional photos and different places to show you in these series (as well as occasionally revisiting some of the greats).

One new series will be “The Anatomy of Gothic.” This will be a comparative look at a Gothic cathedral — for the archetypal Gothic building is a cathedral — one element per post (nave, chancel, tower, portal, stained glass, etc). It will use examples of 20-30 different buildings from throughout the centuries and across the different regions in which Gothic was built to illustrate the many ways each element was used, formed, and articulated.

The other new series will be “The Evolution of Gothic.” Back in 2024 I did two posts which discussed the evolution of French and English Gothic (see my primer); this will be a greatly expanded version of that. Not only will I expand the English and French discusion to three and four posts respectively, but I will widen the scope to go from Gothic’s roots — Romanesque and even a bit earlier — to its nineteenth century revival, as well as expanding the geographic scope to see how the Gothic impulse was interpreted in other countries and regions.

Both of these series will consist of around two dozen posts each, and published over the the course of 2026, into 2027. So there will be lots of Gothic to explore, even after the countdown is finished.

Musee d’Orsay, Paris (France)

Both/And

I never officially announced the Museum Monday series as a weekly thing, but since the first back in February I have managed to produce one every single week. However, I am going to switch to bi-weekly while traveling this fall.

The next one you get from me will be on 8 September. I am not sure whether I will switch back to weekly in 2026, but I do enjoy creating them so I will at least keep up the bi-weekly schedule.

However, I also like to write more exploratory or wide-ranging pieces — such as Media & Social Orders, History as a Philosophical Practice, and The Great Mother. I’ve already outlined a dozen such posts, but have not had time to actually write them due to the series’ schedules. I hope and plan to get at least a couple of these published this year while traveling, and doing less museum posts will make that easier.

Rock-cut Kailasha Temple, Ellora Caves (India)

Thanks for subscribing and following me on this journey so far. These changes will allow me to give each post the attention it deserves while also opening some space for the kind of exploratory writing that originally drew me to Substack. Thanks for your patience as I adjust the rhythm — I think you'll find the results worth it.