Coming back after a long gap between issues

The last issue went out in March. You meant to write again in April, then May got away from you, and now the silence seems to need an explanation. Each month you stay away, the comeback grows in your head. It has to be longer, better, more sincere, worth the wait. So it does not get written, and the gap gets longer.

We think that gets the job backwards. The issue that ends a long gap should be smaller than you imagine, and the one after it matters more. This note is for the writer who has already gone quiet and would like to stop.

Picture who is actually there

You will not be able to measure your return. MossPaper keeps no analytics and shows no follower counts, so no dashboard will tell you who stayed. It helps to imagine three people instead.

• The reader who still has your feed. A feed does not lapse when a writer goes quiet. If someone kept you in their feed reader, your next issue turns up there under your name, and they may need a moment to remember why they followed you. Our note on following writers with RSS explains how that works.
• The reader who looks in now and then. They have watched the date on your newest issue grow older and have drawn their own conclusions. They need evidence that you are writing again.
• The stranger. Someone arriving from a link next year will never experience your gap, only a space between two dates in your archive. Whatever you write for the first two readers has to make sense to this one as well.

Some people will have removed your feed, and you will never know which ones. Leave them be. This issue is for the people still there and the people yet to arrive.

Explain the silence in two sentences

Readers are owed an acknowledgement and not much more. Say that you have been away and, if you want to, why, at the level of detail you would offer a neighbour. Then get on with the subject. Compare these two invented openings, from an imaginary publication about old bicycles:

I am so sorry it has been so long. I have felt terrible about letting this slide. So much has happened that I hardly know where to begin.

I stopped writing in March, when a new job took my evenings. It has since given some of them back. In the meantime I rebuilt the old three-speed, and most of what I told you about its gears was wrong.

The first asks readers to look after your feelings and tells them nothing. The second accounts for the time and has already started the issue. You owe nobody private details, either: "It has been a hard year" is a complete explanation.

Publish an ordinary issue with a real lead

The temptation is to make the return an event: a manifesto, a new direction, a summary of everything that happened while you were gone. We would hold off. The most reassuring thing you can show a returning reader is what they followed you for in the first place, which is an issue much like the old ones.

• Choose a lead that could only come from the gap. Something you tried while away, changed your mind about, or can see now and could not see then.
• Title it after the subject. "I'm back" tells a stranger nothing and will look odd in your archive a year from now. "What I got wrong about three-speed gears" works in a feed list and still makes sense later. The news of your return can wait for the first line.
• Reintroduce the publication in a sentence. "This is a publication about keeping old bicycles on the road" costs you nothing and helps anyone whose memory has faded.
• Link to one earlier issue, with a reason. A single link lets a returning reader pick up the thread.
• Keep it to your normal length, or shorter. Save any big piece for the third issue.

If your subject has shifted while you were away, say so in a line near the top, so people who came for the old one can decide for themselves.

Tidy the front door and leave the archive alone

Anyone curious about your return will click through to your publication page, so give it twenty minutes before you publish. The features page lists what a publication page can carry, and each of these parts may have aged while you were away:

• Your pinned introduction. Does it still describe what you write and how often?
• Your bio and website link. Are they both still true?
• The few issues you point newcomers to. Look for dead links and stale advice, and add a short dated note where something has gone out of date.

Then leave the rest alone. Reworking old issues to make the publication look busier than it was will not hide the gap. Some feed readers may show a retitled or heavily rewritten issue as a new item, so your returning reader could see old work arrive as if it were fresh, just ahead of the news that you are back. The gap is part of the record, and an honest archive can have a space in it.

Write the second issue before you publish the first

One issue after a long silence proves very little, because readers cannot yet tell a return from a one-off. The second issue tells them. So before you publish the first, have the next one drafted, or at least have its lead chosen and its outline written. It also spares you the hardest moment of coming back, which is the following week, when the relief has faded and the page is blank again.

Be careful what you promise, too. The rhythm that stopped working is rarely the right one to resume. If you were weekly before the gap, try monthly. You can always speed up later, and slowing down again means another awkward note. Our note on choosing a publishing rhythm you can keep shows how to work it out from the hours you really have. In the return issue, a modest sentence is plenty:

I plan to write once a month for now, on the first Sunday. If that changes, I will say so here.

If you honestly do not know, say that instead. It is a fairer offer than "I'm back for good", a promise nobody can keep on the first day.

Ask something easy to answer

Close with a question, though not "Is anyone still out there?" That one asks for reassurance, and a reader who does not know you well has no good way to respond. Ask something they can answer in a sentence: which old subject they would like you to return to, or whether anyone else has fought the same problem and won.

Anyone can reply with just a name, and a moderator reads each reply before it appears, so an empty thread on the first day means very little. When replies do arrive, answer them in the thread. Your answers are marked as the writer's, which shows a returning reader at a glance that someone is home.

If nobody answers at all, write the next issue anyway. With no counts to watch, quiet tells you little, and a reader can be glad you are back without saying so. Give it three or four issues before you judge how the return went, and judge it by whether you kept the appointment you set. That is the part you can check.