Blogging is Dead! Long Live Blogging!

July 26, 2018 Izlain1 Comment

I’ve signed up for “Mentor” status for this year’s Blaugust/NBI event, and as such it’s up to myself and fellow mentors to try and steer new blogging participants in the “write” direction (I see what you did there). Some of us that have signed up to be mentors have been doing this whole blogging thing for a long time, and others for only a couple of years. I can tell you from experience that it doesn’t matter how long you do a thing, you can still learn new tricks and still be hit by writer’s block. As such, I’d like to share some of the things that I have learned and hopefully this will help someone to get started or be inspired to keep going.

First though, I’ve stolen this compiled list of this year’s participants from Wilhelm, and I must say it’s a nice looking list, containing both members of the Old Guard along with a good amount of new blogs:

That’s quite the list, and here we thought that blogging was a dying art!

Jokes aside, blogging has been “dying” for years. When I first migrated over to WordPress.com people were talking about blogging being dead, and that was 11 years ago (WordPress just notified me that my anniversary was a few days ago, having migrated back in 2007). Honestly, there is a smaller amount of blogs out there now as opposed to back then, but the Internet has changed. YouTube wasn’t the phenomenon that it has become, streaming wasn’t a thing yet, and though Podcasting was still an option then it wasn’t on my radar nearly as much at that time. As it goes, everyone has their preferred method of content consumption, but just because little Timmy only watches YouTube videos doesn’t mean you should give up on writing because Timmy’s older brother Johnny prefers reading. Also, there aren’t any rules that say you can’t do multiple things if you have the time. I used to maintain this blog and also run a podcast while simultaneously streaming and making some YouTube videos as well. Don’t be afraid to dabble until you find your preferred creative outlet!

I’ll agree with Wilhelm that WordPress.com is probably the best option for a budding blogger. It’s free, you get plenty of customization options and the stat tracking is good. There’s also plenty of storage space for your screenshots and other pictures, which help to make your blog posts more dynamic. I have zero experience with Blogger or Tumblr though, so I could be biased. Still, I would advise against spending money as paying to blog seems silly until you are established and know that you’re in it for the long haul.

Finding your audience is another matter, as most people go into this idea of blogging thinking that they’ll write about this one thing and paint themselves into a corner. My school of thought comes from the late 90’s when I got my start, when I was part of the E/N crowd. E/N = Everything/Nothing and means that you can literally write about anything that you want. I’ve had comments over the years about guides or adventures I’ve written about being appealing, but some people like when I give a more personal touch and write about my life. Your audience will grow primarily by having a good output moreso than the content you’re writing about. If people know that you’re going to have out a post every day, or a couple of posts a week, they’ll come back to consume that content regularly. If you only post once every 6 months you probably won’t have much of an audience, so keep with it!

That’s not to say you need a schedule. I’ve maintained an output of about 15 posts per month for about a year, so about one every other day. Wilhelm and others post every weekday and some post every single day. Find what works for you and try to stick with it. By the end of Blaugust you will have found a way to make 31 posts, one a day, so you should be able to tell if you like that sort of schedule or if you’d prefer to dial it back a bit. My real life schedule is hectic so I don’t have the time to write every day (Blaugust is a challenge every time) but you might. To each their own.

That’s the advice I have for you today. Now I’m going to try and figure out what I’m going to write about next month. Happy writing!

Finding Inspiration Where There Is None

July 25, 2018 Izlain2 Comments

It’s prep week for Blaugust Reborn, which is also sort of the NBI event for this year as well. Mentors were asked to get something written up to inspire the newbies, and it’s funny because I have had a case of writer’s block for the past couple of weeks. I dug around through old posts and found one that I originally used as a guest post on my Sister’s blog (though she doesn’t seem to be writing much anymore either). The post in question was about finding inspiration to write, and it’s very fitting at this moment due to my own difficulties as of late. It was never published here, so I suppose getting it migrated over for posterity is also a good thing. I haven’t changed any of the content of the post otherwise, so I’m thinking I might be able to write another updated version of this later in the week and see how much different my thought processes are now as opposed to then. With all that said, let’s get to it!

Originally Posted January 15th, 2015

We’ve all been there.

You’re staring at a document — you opened it with the intention of writing something, anything really — and now is the time you realize that you have no idea what to write about. Those fleeting thoughts you had before you went to sleep the night before should have been scribbled on the bedside table, but you were too lazy to commit them to paper. Your late-night muse long gone, you have to find some other form of inspiration.

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a novel, a short story, poetry, or a blog post. Writing is tough.

Let’s share some of my background, perhaps to give my words more weight. I have been blogging for ten years. The Couch Podtatoes Podcast is my brain-child. I’ve also been in more than one band (though only one where we played live shows), and lent my lyrical skills to the task. I don’t have lists of books I’ve written or anything else to share on that front, but suffice to say I’ve spent much of my adult life writing.

It may be different to compose blog posts on a regular basis as opposed to writing a literary masterpiece, but I do believe that the techniques I have learned and used translate quite nicely. Coming up with new show ideas for the podcast or lyrics for a song can be just as challenging, just as rewarding, and each requires a certain amount of polish, creativity and must be done within a certain time frame. All of these facets add up to the penultimate accomplishment, even if that goal is just for today, and you have to start anew tomorrow.

Now that I have matter-of-fact-ly lumped all creative endeavors into one category, let’s get down to some tips for finding your muse, when none seems to exist:

1. Inspiration is hard to pin down, because it usually strikes when you least expect it. In years past I might have written an idea down on a notepad; these days I just make sure to make myself regular notes on my smartphone when the ideas come.

2. If the ideas aren’t coming naturally, try researching the topic further on the Internet, or simply browse randomly. I have written hundreds of posts that were inspired by others’ writing.

3. Stay focused on the task until it is done if you can, but don’t be afraid to take a break or let your mind wander for a while. It’s likely you will come up with something when you don’t stress yourself out about it.

4. Listen to music, watch TV or movies, and view artwork. Others who have found their muse can brush off on you. I tend to write more fluidly when I have music playing in the background.

5. If, for whatever reason, the above doesn’t work for you, you might consider putting that project on hold. Sometimes your mind has new ideas it wants to get out first, and it’s okay to come back to an old project later. Some writers don’t release their best work until the middle of their careers. There’s nothing wrong with scrapping that which won’t work.

That’s about all I have for today. Happy Creating!

Blaugust Reborn

July 13, 2018 Izlain2 Comments

It’s been quiet on the blogging front for the past couple of years. The old vanguard of bloggers are still here and typing away, but many of the people I met over the course of the years via events like the Newbie Blogger Initiative and Blaugust have fallen by the wayside. Some have let their blogs die off, some have moved on to other creative endeavors like podcasting, streaming or vlogging, and others simply prefer to interact via social media or discord servers. The ebb and flow of content creation has hit us all at times; I’m no stranger to taking a break from things only to come back later and pick it back up.

This blog has been in existence since 2005, but my blogging “career” started back in the late 1990’s while I was still in high school and the Internet wasn’t nearly the phenomenon that it has become. I first heard about the NBI prior to my involvement, as it was started in 2012 by Syp of Bio Break/Massively Overpowered fame. Syp only planned on running the event the one time, so the 2013 edition ended up being late and after it had ended, there was a call put out for people to help organize the 2014 event. I took up the mantle, and along with people like Doone (who no longer blogs), Roger (from Contains Moderate Peril) and Eri (from Healing the Masses) we ran a very successful event helping new blogging hopefuls get started. Around this time I also started up the Couch Podtatoes podcast with Eri that would run for a couple of years.

In 2015, we participated in the event again, but this time the turnout wasn’t the same and things were less organized. I didn’t have much part in running the event either, but it still happened. 2016 was light again and we started a Discord server but by 2017 the event was pretty much dead. Blaugust sprung up as something a little bit different but still encouraging community interaction back in those early days, but wasn’t run last year either. With a full year devoid of any community events, it’s nice to see that Belghast has taken up the mantle and revived both Blaugust and the NBI for 2018. You can read about his ideas here.

There is a sign up to participate as a new blogger or a mentor (those who have been blogging for at least a couple of years). I’m not sure to what extent I will participate, but those of you who have seen me around for the last decade plus can always ask for advice, I’m happy to help. I will attempt to come up with some writing prompts and perhaps I’ll be able to squeeze out 31 posts for August. We still have this month to prepare so I’m sure that something will come of it.

If nothing else it will be nice to see an increased sense of awareness of the blogosphere and new content being pushed out from more people. If you haven’t done so already, send Bel a kind word or two for pushing the community to interact once more!

You can sign up for Blaugust/NBI stuff here.

Discord Server is here.

Looking forward to new stuff to read!

Thank You To Discord #NBI2016

June 28, 2016 Izlain

As the month of June rounds out, the final days of the Newbie Blogger Initiative are upon us. It has been a grand gesture from the community despite its impromptu nature! Despite being called “NBI Lite” by some, I feel that the new format of the initiative — the merging onto a Discord Server rather than primarily relying on forums — moved things into an even more interactive experience for all. Through the use of the main website linked above, Twitter and Discord we were able to spread the word, and keep the original vision of the program alive, and the community has been thriving once more. People are gaming, and people are sharing, and connecting in new ways, and that what makes this thing so damn special. Thanks for another great year!

Thoughts on Writing and Format

June 23, 2016 Izlain2 Comments

Just the other day one of our veterans, Rambling Redshirt wrote an article about choosing how to format your posts. In it, he gave his opinion on whether or not he thought it was a good idea to have single or multi-topic articles when writing for your blog. As one of the long tenured bloggers in our little community, I thought I would give my thoughts on the topic as well.

To me, blogging is a form of journalism. How many of you veterans have written a blog post that would be worthy of a larger scale news site? I’d wager most of you have. Some bloggers that run in this circle have already spread their work out onto other sites like MMOGames, MMORPG.com or even Massively Overpowered. If you pay attention to those types of sites or even more traditional news sites, they tend to have designated columns for designated subjects, which can be either single or multi-topic. News sites tend to focus on one story at a time, but then have columns such as “not so massively” which is a semi-off-topic post that collects news stories about various games that wouldn’t fill up a whole post on their own.

It is my opinion that you can have both single and multi-topic blog posts on your site, just like these news sites tend to do. What I have done over the years is to think about the things that I’d like to write about, and then proceed to determine if a single or multi-topic post is more appropriate. I have also come up with running columns that have been dedicated to both single and multiple topics. If you head up to the top of this blog, you’ll find the “ongoing series” tab, where I have collected these columns for easy access.

I write about more than just gaming so I feel that having a column with a particular name will indicate to your readers if this next post is going to be something that they would be interested in reading. For example, my “By The Numbers” column is all about professional football, so if you aren’t into that sport you can skip those posts. I had a similar column about Fantasy LCS. I have also had a column called “State of the Game” that was a round-up post of sorts, where I collected information about all of the games I was currently playing that week and talked about them all in short bursts.

The general rule of thumb, is to find the word count that you are most comfortable with writing and releasing. If you tend to write 1k word articles, you may want to get really in depth on one topic, or talk about multiple subjects to fill up that word count. If you write smaller articles, you might find that single topics are all you have room for. Generally speaking, it’s what you want to write about, so there aren’t any rules to follow. I have just found that my preferred option is to write about 1,000 words per post, so I tend to make single and multi-topic posts that are about that length. There are exceptions to every rule of course, and this post is likely falling short of that 1k mark, but that’s okay.

If you want to follow my lead, then figure out what length of posts you prefer. From there, you can determine how many topics to include depending on how much you want to say about the subject. If you tend to write about a similar subject often, try to come up with a catchy title and make a little banner for the top of those posts so that your audience knows what to expect when those post titles come up. That’s really all there is to it. Hope this helps.