Thoughts on Starting a Daily(ish) Blog
It’s been a few weeks since I started this whole “daily blogging” thing. I don’t actually post everyday, but I do write everyday. Some of it is immediately thrown in the trash, like one I wrote about not having read Terry Pratchett since he passed away only to realize I’ve read several books since then. There was another ranting about how tired I am of people refusing to leave Twitter and Facebook, and while I stand behind the general sentiment, it was far too preachy.
I’ve been thinking about what this daily writing has done to the ol' brain box and that red thing in my chest. When I started this specific blog, I didn’t want to sound like one of those self-help nutters that tells you to dociphate your dibiliterry as you drink down Dr. Timbly Puuph's Brian Boosting Pills for Maximum Thinkitude! But, the truth is I really do feel a lot better about myself, and my writing, after doing so many of these in such a relatively short amount of time. My biggest problem as a writer was never the actual process of writing, it was convincing myself to actually start. You’ve no doubt heard the phrase about a body staying at rest. Forcing myself to start the day with a couple of blogs has done wonders to get the gears in motion.
I haven’t opened my third eye thanks to the power of talking about Escape from New York or complaining about how badly my attempts at transiting to Linux have gone. But getting the ball rolling everyday by blogging has lead me to get several short stories written, and some of my long languishing video scripts off the ground. It’s still difficult, especially on days when I have to go to the day job, but having this routine has provided stability.
Beyond my writing career, I also feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I’m not somebody with a million friends to call when I’ve got something to say. I keep myself to myself and I generally prefer it that way. But every so often I just have to vent, and not having someone there has sometimes caused problems. I guess I have to vent more often than I thought.
Most of these blogs I write are off-the-cuff, spur of the moment ramblings, such as this one. I don’t go into these with any outline, any plan, or even a general theme I want to talk about. I just start writing and whenever I stop, that’s the end of the blog. I give it a quick once over for gramer and to make sure the wordy word-words do goodly, but otherwise I publish them as-is. This is a huge departure from how I’ve written my entire life. Before, I'd only write in this super-structured, super-organized way. I knew what I wanted to say and I meticulously planned how I was going to say it. That’s still how I write the bulk of my projects, but its nice to be able to turn my brain off every once and awhile and just let my thoughts flow free. Maybe that should be the big takeaway from all this blogging?
Every so often I’ll write a blog I put more effort in. Reviews like The Paradox Paradox or Gate of Ivrel, and some other upcoming blogs have been outlined, researched, and edited multiple times. I feel like I have to maintain some level of professionality. Like, for example, the short story I just finished about a man who calls phone numbers he finds in bathrooms. Or the one I just started about a man who’s getting revenge on the literary world who keeps rejecting him by writing terrible sequels to classic works of literature. See, professional.
Setting up the custom domain on here was a bit of a pain. I got the domain from Hostinger, purely because they offered a free one after I used them to host my failed Triple Iris website earlier this year. Oh, the bad memories are rushing back into my mind. Moving swiftly on, I followed the instructions on the BearBlog website for the CNAME setup, and it didn’t work, so I had to go with the A setup. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry, neither do I.
Otherwise, BearBlog has made it a simple process. I was able to set the whole thing up in about an hour, and it would have been faster than that if I didn’t keep rewriting the Home and About pages and constantly rearranging things. The Video tab is a bit janky because I can’t figure out how to list videos in a grid, but it’s no big deal, this site isn’t really for that. I’ll talk more about Bear in a future post, and I have plans to show off some other great blogs you should read as well.
So I hope you’re enjoying what you’re reading so far. And if you don’t, then I at least hope its awful enough to leave an impression anyway.
