I'm being confronted with the fact that while I'm not bad at stringing sentences together, and my writing is even on occasion half-decent, when you get paid for it (however little) you need to be half-decent by habit, and on occasion spectacular.
So, in this self-improving mood - and also, not so secretly, fishing for infortmation about my handful of visitors, whose movements I track obsessively via sitemeter - I thought I'd ask: what do you think are the strong and weak points of this blog? What could be improved? What could you do without, and what would you like to see (more of)?
We live to serve, after all.
I am aware that most blogs need, and have, a niche. Nathanial loves actresses and lists, Dennis is great at in-depth articles and of course, his famous quizzes I feel too intimidated and ignorant to participate in, the Self-Styled Siren loves old movies, the Shamus subverts the whole blog medium by keeping no archives and changing template every other day, hiding himself in the shadows like a true P.I., and I could go on. What my niche should be is still a bit of a mystery, although I do feel I've been achieving a more consistent tone and style of late. All suggestions are welcome.
And while I'm dealing with blog matters, some household announcements: as you might have noticed, my blogroll has been updated. Some blogs on it had unfortunately met their untimely demise (cinemarati, in particular), others had changed URL's or even identity. Also in the right column, you'll find a link to an infrequently updated alphabetical list of reviews, and a link to my "Tumbling Log". I don't have a lot of links on my blog - I prefer to keep my entries restricted to my own thoughts - but I do of course regularly run across things I'd like to share. The tumbling log is kind of a scrapbook where you'll find few of my own thoughts, but many things I liked: quotes, videos, links to articles. Still planned is a revision of the out-of-date list of DVD's I own.
That's all folks. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.
8.09.2007
Writing is hard
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1 comment:
Wow, I'm just catching up on stuff I've missed out on in other blogs while I took a little unscheduled break from movies and I wish I'd gotten to this post earlier so I could respond in some way. I hope it's not so old that these comments will be buried forever.
I find it hard writing for the fun of it and I can't even imagine doing it with the extra added pressure of getting paid for it! It's great that you're doing it though and best of luck to you.
Trying to find a writers voice is probably the most important thing you can do and probably the hardest. Lots of people can have an opinion about a movie and put words together in a coherent fashion(though a shocking number can't even seem to do that) but what makes the writing interesting is when the personality comes through.
This is something I continue to struggle with myself so I don't know how much help I can be other than voice of encouragement.
What draws me to your blog? It's hard to say really though a lot of it is that many times I'll read one of your opinions and think "Yes! This person gets it!" though that's really more of a question of content than one of style. Stylewise you come across as very intelligent, thoughtful and incisive. Your writing reflects that but you don't come across dry or overly intellectual. There is a casual warmth and a humor and a certain self effacing quality to how you write that is nicely disarming. No one likes a know-it-all and you don't come across that way.
Does any of that make a lick of sense?
Anyway, sorry this comment is so late and I hope you read it.
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