Blog About Blogging – Part I
(The first in a series of posts on the creating of Waltzing in Perdition.com)
This whole blogging thing is very much a love-hate relationship, believe it or not. More love than hate, but the tension is ever-present.
It has to do with the arena of blogging and the alleged rules ordering the frontier. It occurred to me yesterday while working in the yard and I thought a bit of How Did This Happen was in order…all the better to explain What I Love About Blogging and What I Hate, that is.
About a year ago, I self-published my first book: A Beautiful Hell – Book One of the Waltzing in Perdition Chronicles. It was a great experience and one that dropped me smack-dab in the middle of something I’d been putting off and hiding from for years: writing publicly. A few radio interviews, a few small speaking engagements, and not a few Wait…You Did WHATs and I realized I never should have waited as long as I did.
I love writing. I love words. I love wordsmithing. I live for cadence and lyrical expression and, though I am an obvious fan of what they call the ‘run-on sentence,’ I’m an even bigger fan of the lethal minimalism I occasionally come across (without feeling the pressure to imitate).
As writing and other creative processes began to whirlpool, not the least of which was amateur photography, I made mention to my friend and neighbor Kirsten my wanting a digital camera. A few weeks later she stopped by to show me a certain blog who’s author used the very camera after which we both lusted. I’ll never forget that day, because when she pulled up the specific article detailing the camera, my eyes glazed over and I went into an artistic catatonic state.
Because the blog’s layout and design immediately arrested my attention and hit me over the head. I see a lot of design. A lot. I’m a designer and web developer, so it’s part of the daily diet around here. To put it mildly. And I don’t care if it’s kind or not, it has to be said: 95% of the blogs out there are ugly as sin. A mess. A train wreck of article and advertisement and Google Ads, and, worst of all, unoriginal regurgitated articles in the form of lists.
But not the one Kirsten showed me.
My brain split in two and I had to concentrate very hard to listen to her and take in the fine points of the article about the camera with the left side while, at the same time, do my best to hang on tight while the right side went on a joyride. In a split second (and I’m not kidding lol) I realized I knew now what I was going to do. And how.
I was going to blog.
[...] (The second in a series of posts on the creating of Waltzing in Perdition.com For the first, click here.) [...]
[...] (The third in a series of posts on the creating of Waltzing in Perdition.com For the first, click here.) [...]