While I’ve been working on my new blog, I’ve been relearning what makes a good blog. Over the next few weeks, I’m planning on reapplying those principles here.
Please bear with me.
-D-
Category Archives: Writing
Time Divided
Over the last month or so, I’ve been writing more and more at a steadily increasing rate. Ya’ll haven’t seen it, since ya’ll aren’t reading my new blog (and for good reason) and you haven’t seen the fragments of the short stories I’ve been working on (once again, with good reason), but the writing is happening more.
Which means, unfortunately, that I’ve had less time to spend over here. I used to write more than the quote I set for myself. You can see a few times last year when I wrote more than ten entries per month. This year, however, you would be hard-pressed to find a week where I’d written more than my required two entries.
I can’t say that I’m entirely bummed out that writing is getting in the way of writing. I’m just letting ya’ll know that I am writing, even if I’m not writing.
-D-
Filed under Writing
Spoilin’ for a Fight
Ideally
I would like to return to a point where I would write entries like:
Isolated Moments on a Long Road
I am a good writer. Not great. Not the best. But I have my goddamn moments. I used to rage and wail and let loose a torrent of fire about subjects that mattered to me. I could get poetical and allegorical and drop some symbolism in a paragraph filled with careless vulgarity and I would relish in it.
But I’ve bound myself up in knots and ties and subjects I won’t speak about and sticking to tired formats and language I won’t fucking use in my blog anymore.
And the more I think about it, the angrier I get and the more I want to rail against it. I’m tired of this mediocrity and blandness and triteness. It’s boring me and it’s boring you. Let’s not psychoanalyze it. Let’s just acknowledge that when the writer is bored, we’re all bored and I’m bored.
I used to write things I was proud of and now I can’t even remember the last ten blog entries.
Let that be my resolution for the rest of the year. I’m going to write about things that don’t bore me to tears and you will be entertained and I might say a bad word or two.
–D–
Bloggin’
With my waning, most likely, undiagnosed bronchitis on the one hand and wedding plan on the other, I haven’t had much time for blogging. I’m not asking for forgiveness, since most of you are spambots and were not offended anyway, I’m just offering up an explanation why I haven’t been able to stick to my blog schedule at all.
In truth, blogging and writing have slid so far down the list of priorities that I’m having trouble seeing them. I feel like I’ve been phoning it in the last couple of months as my job has managed to drain most of my energy in a surprising fashion.
I keep plugging away and hoping that something is going to happen, but all that’s really happening is I’m beat after work and during the weekend, I do not want to sit in front of my computer after doing that all week long. I at least have a hobby now, which I’ve maintained for a surprising amount of time, but now I want something else.
The blog has to change. The format has to change. I’m not feelin’ it and you’re not feelin’ it.
Let’s work together.
Throw some ideas up and see what we get.
-D-
Filed under Writing
The Magic in the World
Instead of writing my movie review, I’ve been sitting here watching episode after episode of Fool Us, a British show where various British magicians try and fool Penn and Teller with their magic tricks. It’s just forty-five minutes of magicians trying their hardest and I can’t stop watching it.
I have a fascination with magic shows that can best be explained by why I also love found film horror movies: I love the idea of trying to convince your audience that the world they live in is not all that it appears to be.
It’s one of those things that constantly gets ahold of me. The idea of being able to forgot for a second that there is no magic and accept what your eyes are showing you, that’s a powerful thing to me.
I keep having ideas of how to accomplish it, but it’s a little harder than just writing a story. You have to dress the stage and make sure that there are no seams where the flats don’t mesh together perfectly.
I doubt I’ll ever do it, but I do have some ideas.
One or two.
-D-
Filed under Writing
Starting Anew
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve decided to start a new blog and it’s been a startling experience. In the last two days, I’ve written four entries. They didn’t require soul searching or deep thinking or effort to write.
And that hasn’t been the case here for a very long time. Often, I struggle to come up with ideas or concepts to write about. That’s a big reason why you get to sit through new features every other day.
But the new bog has a single focus and a single point of conversation to start from. I know what I’m going to be writing about the moment I sit down. And while that sounds constricting, it’s actually freeing. It frees me from paralyzing choice.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be writing here twice a week, but this other blog has given me ideas about how to energize this blog.
That’s a good thing and I’m looking forward to the next few weeks.
-D-
Filed under Writing
Branching Out
I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a new blog, in addition to this one.
There are a few reasons why I shouldn’t and not very many reasons why I should. In fact, to be truthful, I can’t think of a single reason of why I should except that I want to.
I’ve been futzing around with a new(ish) hobby for a couple of months now and I want to document it. I always want to document the things I do, but I don’t think this blog could take the burden of yet one more of my bursts of intense interest (see: baseball, beer, boxing, running, horror movies). I want to pare this blog down a bit more, steer the focus more back to what’s going on with my writing and my life and maybe offset my numerous hobby bursts to a second blog.
That means a lot more work. And, if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, you might notice a surly unwillingness to put any work in this blog. But in order to make this one better, I need to keep tweaking and changing and finding new outlets.
We’ll see. I haven’t decided anything yet. But maybe there’ll be another blog out there with my name on it. I mean, aside from all those Xanga blogs I have lying around.
-D-
Filed under Writing
Playing in Someone Else’s Playground
I’ve been working on a story to submit that takes place in an already established universe and the experience has been…interesting, to say the least.
When I’m writing for myself, it’s fairly speedy. I make up the rules for the world and away I go, only stopping because I saw something shiny on the internet. The story will be fully formed in my head and I’ll usually only change things based on the story itself.
But because I’m playing in someone else’s world, I have to abide by the rules. Which means research. Lots and lots and lots of research. Keeping in mind that I only have to write a thousand word sample, I would say that I’ve devoted a good three or four hours to just reading articles and books to make sure that what I’m writing makes sense within the confines of the world. And this is a lot for someone who never does research when they write.
I’ll write for a little bit, then wonder if I can actually do what I’ve done and then head back onto wikipedia. And then go back and erase three hundred words. It’s a jarring and jolting process, like riding in a car driven by someone who doesn’t know how to drive stick; I go forward a foot, jerk to a violent stop, roll back a few feet and start again.
But, in a way, it’s freeing. Most of the heavy lifting has been taken off of my shoulders. I can just focus on the plot and the characters without spending too much time on world building. Its a shift in priorities and a different type of writing that I’m enjoying and fits better into the time I have available.
So, maybe, in a few months I’ll be contributing to someone else’s universe and then I can take another whack at my own worlds.
-D-
