December 14, 2016

Always Sarcastic, Never Snarky...It's The Blue Light Special

As per the new norm, a fresh post is to be had at I Are Writer!

The other day, I was racking my overly mature brain for something to write about, when BAM! it hit me.

"Why don't I write about a category on my blog that hasn't seen the light of day since March of this year?"

So off the grid I went, to search of times gone by @ Cedar's Mountain. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to write about, so I picked a couple of tags {Blogs & Writing} and started to skim/scan/read the various posts under those tags.

Let me tell you something {to quote that great philosopher, Fire Marshal Bill}, I was seriously amazed at the quality of the blog posts I wrote five plus years ago, and how much passion and creativity oozed out of each one.

Blog: February 2013 & September 2011; Writing: June 2011, August 2011, August 2011, and September 2011.

It really seemed like for all intents and purposes, I had literally burned the candle at all three spots to write each and every post. A bottomless well of blog creativity, or so it seemed, from 2008 to mid 2013. But, it seemed that blog creativity came at a heavy price. While I was furiously pounding away my blog, trying to make it the best thing around {at one point I had almost 150 subscribers}, my regular writing didn't really grow and mature the way I had envisioned. Or even intended for that matter.

So when I decided to switch gears to concentrate more on my regular writing and put slightly less focus on my blog writing, it had a boomerang effect. Instead of staying at the same level of high standard that I had originally set for myself with my blogging, the quality of the blog posts began to slip. Barely noticeable at first, but within a couple of years, it grew to the point where I became disappointed {but not quite disillusioned} with my output.

The quality of my writing, on the other hand, grew exponentially. All the sarcasm, all the snarkiness, all the biting humor eventually found a safe and snug home within my storytelling. Somehow, in the span of five years {overlap/crossover with my blogging}, my writing improved to the point where I am able to consistently insert roughly 5-7% of my quirky personality into every story I write. Not so much as to make it vehicle for my ego, but just enough to give my characters, of both genders, a richness that was m.i.a. in the early years.

I'm not quite sure what the main point of this blog post is. I guess you can say I'm having a flashback, in which I write a story with a plot that was there at that particular point of creation, but disappeared the moment I wrote the last word. So in keeping with the flashback, we can safely say that based on the post title and the opened paragraph, the initial plot point was to riff on an old post. But soon after, we did a bait and switch, and went off on a tangent that had absolutely zero to do with the blog and all to do with writing.

So to finish up this flashback, I leave you with a flashback-type of song that I'd first heard in a Popeye cartoon.



(c) 2016 BOOKS BY G.B. MILLER. All Rights Reserved.

10 comments:

  1. Indeed, my old blogs rocked pretty well. My current ones, not so much. on the rare occasion that they appear.

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    1. Your current posts are pretty solid. But if you can export your FB wit to your blog, I think they would rock yet again. :D

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  2. At least you recognize that. Maybe I should switch my focus more? Although my blog isn't quality writing, it's just a ton of research and html formatting.

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    1. One of the reasons I started blogging was to practice my writing skills. I still do some 8 1/2 years later because there's always room for improvement. As for yours, I give you major props for being consistently concise and to the point with minimal paragraph usage.

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  3. The moral of the story is that you can't spread yourself too thin, I guess.

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    1. Which is probably why I'm back down to two blogs/two posts per week.

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  4. I knew that song before Popeye. Shows my age. I wish I had not completely deleted my first blog. At least I kept parts of it on CD.

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    1. I haven't deleted any of mine, but I did close my short story blog about four years ago. I still use it when I need to use a short story for a writing project from time to time (like my for my current book).

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  5. It's good sometimes to stop and take stock of what's happened before and why. You seemed to have figured it all out.

    Greetings from London.

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    1. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. In this particular case, I think I was trying to figure the why to my blogging leisurely declining in personal quality.

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