Picture from Lulu Blog
I started writing a blog in 2007 on MySpace although it wasn't daily back then, I wrote a daily blog one year while MySpace was still the best of the social media sites but gave it up and resumed the daily post towards the end of 2011. It was Richard Herring who influenced me to do it because he writes a daily blog and started it for the same reason I did, to give me the encouragement to actually write something. I would recommend writing a blog to anyone who wants to try their hand at writing because it teaches you to think about something interesting, it isn't enough to just write a 'Dear Diary' style post; I got out of bed and went downstairs to make a cup of tea... You have to find one thing that makes a story and build it from there. This is valuable experience in honing your skill as a writer, and indeed finding out if you actually have a skill to begin with. My earliest blogs are terrible when read alongside more recent ones because I am always learning, just as the shows I used to do on Sherwood Radio sound embarrassing when listened to now as an experienced broadcaster - you don't just get on a two wheeled bike and ride it first time. Everything is learned and the ones who can do it are soon weeded out, I would make a lousy welder for example if you suddenly asked me to do some, but if I applied myself and got to know what I was doing then I would hopefully eventually become a skilled welder, providing I hadn't blinded or maimed myself in the process.
Although I have enjoyed writing this blog on a daily basis for the last years, and of course enjoying feedback whether it is in agreement or people thinking I'm an arsehole, I am considering scaling it down. Over the last few years people have congratulated me on speaking my mind, or fallen out with me for speaking my mind, but the main thing is creating a reaction and if people are talking about you it means one thing, that they are not ignoring you. Since I moved back home to Nottingham I have worked hard to gain recognition for what I do within the music business and as a writer and I like to think that this blog has been a part of that climb. However, I am finding it harder and harder to keep to a strict regime of writing a daily blog and now that I am in a good place career wise, (or certainly a better place than I was in 2007 when nobody knew or cared who I was) I wonder if it is essential anymore.
Perhaps I would get my enthusiasm back if I wrote a weekly blog instead, or just wrote when I had something to write about rather than spending the day wondering if something would make a good entry.
The Sunday Alternative Podcast #60 is available from here
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October Housekeeping
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