So, I'm officially a blogger now. Hopefully this will light a fire under my ass to actually write on a daily basis and under my own impetus, rather than just barely carrying on a conversation. Lord knows I could use the discipline, as I'm nearly bereft of self-motivation right now. I suppose that reading Leonard's Ludickid.com blog is the main thing that spurred me to take the plunge. He's an extremely funny and productive guy, and while he's smart as a whip I think the thing that really seperates his excellence from my suckitude is my do-nothing way of dealing with the world. He's one of the only bloggers I've seen who bothers to use his online journal as primarily an outlet for creative writing as opposed to a litany of mundane personal anecdotes or political ranting. Not that I have anything against either of those, and indeed have engaged in plenty of both in this life, but Leonard's usage seems more ambitious and it's certainly more entertaining. Now, before this debut entry slops into nothing but a drooling fan-letter to an online penpal, I guess I'd better set down some rules for myself.
1 - Write five days a week, every week. It's okay to take holidays from the blog, but treat it like a second job. A job that doesn't pay anything, but heck, you're not putting that much effort into it anyway, so why complain?
2 - Don't turn the blog into a mere whine-a-thon. It's boring, unpleasant and redundant, and while it may occassionally be cathartic to piss and moan into the internet ether, it's not likely to result in any good writing, and that's why your doing this: to write and write well.
3 - It's okay to post record and video reviews here. I don't have any paying outlet for this stuff, and film and music are important to me, so it'll be good practice to put that stuff in the blog. Same goes for comics, 'real' books, and art shows. Who knows? Maybe I'll become incisive and well-spoken enough on these subjects to make a little loot from it someday. It's a long shot, sure, but I'm reasonably smart and some folks who make loot from such pursuits don't seem to be.
4 - Don't make that the ONLY thing this blog is about. Austin, you're going to need to sharpen up other kinds of skills as well, so autobiographical stuff or fiction writing excercizes or political rants or whatever are going to be not only permitted but encouraged. Just try not to embarass yourself too much - this is a public blog, after all.
5 - Have fun. Be faithful to your task, but don't dread it. You don't have to please anyone but yourself here, so it's not like class, where your work is going to be critiqued and graded. The critiques and grades will (probably) inevitably come of course, this being a public blog, but they won't really matter unless I want them too.
1 - Write five days a week, every week. It's okay to take holidays from the blog, but treat it like a second job. A job that doesn't pay anything, but heck, you're not putting that much effort into it anyway, so why complain?
2 - Don't turn the blog into a mere whine-a-thon. It's boring, unpleasant and redundant, and while it may occassionally be cathartic to piss and moan into the internet ether, it's not likely to result in any good writing, and that's why your doing this: to write and write well.
3 - It's okay to post record and video reviews here. I don't have any paying outlet for this stuff, and film and music are important to me, so it'll be good practice to put that stuff in the blog. Same goes for comics, 'real' books, and art shows. Who knows? Maybe I'll become incisive and well-spoken enough on these subjects to make a little loot from it someday. It's a long shot, sure, but I'm reasonably smart and some folks who make loot from such pursuits don't seem to be.
4 - Don't make that the ONLY thing this blog is about. Austin, you're going to need to sharpen up other kinds of skills as well, so autobiographical stuff or fiction writing excercizes or political rants or whatever are going to be not only permitted but encouraged. Just try not to embarass yourself too much - this is a public blog, after all.
5 - Have fun. Be faithful to your task, but don't dread it. You don't have to please anyone but yourself here, so it's not like class, where your work is going to be critiqued and graded. The critiques and grades will (probably) inevitably come of course, this being a public blog, but they won't really matter unless I want them too.
posted by Austin at 2:25 PM
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