People and Blogs: Chris DeLuca

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

Hello, I'm Chris DeLuca. I was raised in northern New Jersey in the United States, and now live in New York City. I'm a software developer, and regularly perform improv comedy.

Growing up, I wanted to be a comedy writer. I wasn't the funniest kid in my friend group, but when I was funny, it was elating, like I had cracked a code to connecting with others. I was hungry for it, desperate, even. I loved being creative with my friends, so it seemed like an ideal life to be funny and creative with other people. However, I didn't know anything about the entertainment industry or anyone who worked in it, so my plans on entering it were vague at best.

I ended up attending Hofstra University, majoring in creative writing, and doing a lot of sketch comedy, short films, and a comedic play outside of academics.

What's the story behind your blog?

I was diagnosed with Leukemia, a chronic type of cancer of the blood, in 2009, not long after I graduated college. The economy had crashed. I was tutoring kids at my local community college, and reading scripts for a relatively small film company, in an attempt at starting my career and getting out of my parent's basement.

Cancer changed all that.

I went through drugs, chemo, and a stem cell transplant, and then a complicated recovery that kept me highly immunosuppressed for about half a decade. The situation was so dire at one point, that after I surprisingly made it through, my doctors published a paper about it.

I have a large extended family and circle of friends, so while I was going through treatments I got tired of re-explaining the latest medical updates to everyone I knew. I thought, why not start a blog, and then I won't have to repeat myself so much. Turns out, readership was sporadic at best, and I ended up having to say the same information the same amount of times. However, I found the process of writing about my situation therapeutic, even if it was a sanitized account, and designed to make the reader feel better.

The first iteration of my blog was hosted on Wordpress, and I almost exclusively wrote about my Leukemia experiences. As my health improved, I started writing about other things—games, creative projects, the blight of social media. Once I started a career writing software for the web, a lot of my posts became technical explainers.

I migrated to Github pages and Jekyll probably around 2012, and switched domain names from the free Wordpress subdomain I had to bronzehedwick.com, which was my handle most places online. My post frequency slid down over the years, but never went away. I migrated to a self hosted Hugo site around 2014, transitioning domain names again to what I have now, wanting something that used my real name instead of a handle.

After backing Manton's micro.blog project on Kickstarter, and eventually integrating with micro.blog's social feed as an independent blog, my post frequency shot up, largely because of microblogging. It's no real surprise—it's less time consuming to write short posts than long ones, but I started writing longer posts more frequently as well; turns out, when you write more, you write more.

Last year, I migrated my blog to micro.blog hosting. The migration was somewhat painful, as the auto import didn't generate redirects from my old URL scheme to the micro.blog ones as advertised, so I had to manually create them for every page. Long and tedious, but it was a nice opportunity to review and revisit old posts. Other than that, I have been very happy with micro.blog.

I decided to move at first because I wanted a posting interface I could easily access on my phone, and I wanted to post more photos, something that would end up being less economical on a small VPS. I ended up really enjoying the cross posting functionality. The newsletter feature is also a great feature for me; several people only experience my blog that way.

I post a lot more omnivorously now, with life updates, observations, jokes, personal essays, fiction, reviews, sketches, and whatever else all thrown together. It's wild and usually embarrassing to go back and read older posts, and I'm often tempted to delete them. I largely don't, however, since while I wouldn't write like that now, or even stand by some ideas I had back then, it was all things I did say, and all part of me getting here. Deleting feels like hiding, presenting a myth of arriving at my current state without so much as a stumble.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

My posts always follow my interests, which shift as time passes. I take a highly "vibes" based approach to ideas. As I'm observing the world or introspecting, an idea might come, and I'll hold it in my mind for a bit. If, after turning it over a while, it still feels like something I want to put my name on publicly, I'll write it. If it's a short post, I'll usually use my phone to post it right then. If it's a longer idea, I'll add it to my to do list of potential blog ideas.

For longer posts, I'll spend time, usually in the evenings, alone writing on my laptop. They take two or three sessions to complete, slowed down by perfectionism and editing while I'm writing. I'm working on that, and over time I have thankfully reduced their hold on me.

With more emotional, personal pieces, I like to write by hand in a notebook. This takes a lot longer overall, since I need to first write it, then type it up, but the feel of the work is changed. The flow of writing with a pen is so much different than a keyboard, and can create a different feeling project. Sometimes, I need to be away from the screen, especially when feeling something out. When typing up the piece, I inevitably make tweaks and edits, and usually do another pass or two, sometimes dropping and rewriting whole sections, until the clay feels molded. Or, at least molded enough. I've been practicing publishing things before I feel they're ready, because I'm never satisfied in the moment of creation.

Sometimes, when I go back and read my old work, I feel like I nailed it.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

If it's not a short post, I need at least an hour to write in solitude. I'm trying to practice writing with less time, but I really need to be alone to properly focus. I live with roommates and in one of the world's busier cities, so that's not always easy. I find it takes some emotional effort to carve out time to write, time I could be spending with others, doing something active, being out in it, man. It's hard, but I feel I need to write, and if I don't for too long, it's like a tear in my brain, nagging me until I express myself on the page.

I have found physical space is important. For me, it goes back to solitude, but also comfort and ideally boring. If I'm not comfortable, I'll invent excuses to do anything else pretty quickly. These days, I mostly write from my IKEA Poang chair, and find it alarmingly comfortable. If I'm this at ease, how will I find an excuse not to write? I guess I'll just have to, then.

A more recent discovery is a boring space works well for me. Or rather, a familiar one, so that it's nuances are not distracting. Even being outside on a beautiful day, while it sounds idyllic, can be so wonderful that I don't want to bend my hand to the labor of writing. The easiest space for that for me is my bedroom, where I have the chair, although I've been productive in other, similar spaces.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

I host my blog on micro.blog, which runs on Hugo under the hood. My blog was previously on Hugo, so a good amount of the migration was pretty simple. I host my domain on Namecheap, where I buy all my domains. I started out with a predefined theme from micro.blog, after having written my own for my previous, self hosted iteration, and have tweaked the templates and stylesheet to the point where it has my own personality now.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

This is the question I asked myself last year before I migrated to micro.blog hosting, prompting that decision; I was tired of doing sysadmin work for not as many features, so the move was a no-brainer.

If I had to do everything over, I would start with my name as my domain name, instead of using a hosts's subdomain or handle. I would love to have thought of a quippy or interesting name for the blog itself, outside of my name, but that never happened, so my name is a strong second place.

If at all possible, I would have loved to have gotten a dot com or dot net domain, since those are regulated better than the privately owned dot me that I have. The price has crept up over time, so I really don't love that. That being said, I haven't experienced a true price spike, so I'm hoping that continues.

From a content perspective, I would be less precious, and post more.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

I pay $10 per month for premium micro.blog hosting. I pay about $20 per year for my domain name.

I thought about monetizing my blog years ago, but never wanted it to feel like a job. If I were asking for money, I'd feel obligated to deliver something specific and on a schedule. I also can't imagine I'd generate much revenue from my personal blog, so the embarrassment of asking and the pressure to deliver never felt worth it to me.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

• dinewell.substack.com
• jvns.ca
• rousette.org.uk
• kottke.org
• whatever.scalzi.com
• web3isgoinggreat.com/
• fluxblog.org

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

I do improv in New York City with the Cat's Cradle ensemble. If you'd like to see us, we post our upcoming shows to catscradleimprov.com. No show is the same, and everyone laughs a lot, so we must be doing something right.

There's some longer term writing projects I'm excited about, but are too embryonic to share yet. Years ago, my friend Shannon staged several live performances of the infamous My Immortal fan fiction, which I was a part of. I have been doing some work around that, so watch my blog for updates.

Thanks!