I caved in to temptation. I know this Tumblr malarky could well be a passing fad or whatever, but it’s currently a less labour-intensive way of writing that fits in well with everything else that’s going on at the moment. This blog ISN’T dead yet (I know I haven’t been replying to comments as often as I’d like) but there are too many ideas that float around inside my head and never make it as far as becoming blog posts.
Think of it then as my writing of stuff that wouldn’t otherwise get written at all. The name, by the way, is a pun on the title of a song by 65dos combined with a few more layers of double-meanings of the sort that I’m constantly amusing myself with. Self-indulgent but eh, isn’t that what blogging is all about?
What I’m constantly trying to break is the usual routine of writing a 1000+ blog post in a cycle of Draft Rewrite Hell spread across several evenings, going something like this:
- come up with an interesting idea in the shower or during a boring spell at work
- start a draft that reaches around 600 words
- leave it for a day or two then do other things
- add more paragraphs until a critical mass of around 1100 words is reached
- cut out ‘unecessary’ and repetitive bits
- rearrange a couple of paragraphs to improve the flow
- agonise over suitable screencaps/illustrations
- repeat steps 5-7 until I want to punch myself in the face
- add screencaps, check for spelling mistakes, say “bollocks to it…” and hit Publish
- grin with satisfaction when it appears on my feedreader
- spot a dumb typo that survived x draft rewrites. Raeg.
Needless to say it’s liberating to either post one pic or churn out three or four paragraphs right off the bat and only checking for spelling mistakes than going through what’s become an unbreakable habit over the past four or so years. Writing is a compulsion for me so stopping entirely would be like losing a limb, but there’s no escaping the fact that I put myself through a lot of aggro and come out of it less than satisfied with the results.
There are things I’ve grown to love about the WordPress approach though: categories, tags, page layouts that are easy on the eyes and most importantly the commenting system. I’ve no idea of people’s opinions, if any, on my Tumblr posts…I could be speaking into an empty room for all I know. The WP comments thread is the easiest way of getting the two-way traffic of Web 2.0 and I’d hate to walk away from that entirely.
The career business is depressing as hell which saps more of my energy than I’d like but the music-related project is finally getting moving at last…I even have a couple of proper blog posts in the pipeline in the next week or two but in between the usual schedule, Tumblr or GRSI are where you’ll find me. Beats suffering full-blown Hiatus Disease, right?