The biggest
lesson I learned this year is that blogging at a rate of two posts per week
drains you. It’s a lot especially since I continue to read and review more
novels than I originally expected. I don’t know why it happens, it just does. I
don’t focus too much on what I’m reviewing or worry about keeping strict
balance or variety of mediums (comics, books, and movies or television).
Somehow I manage to keep a decent variety of reviews but novels at still a
pretty large focus. That’s unfortunate only because reading them is nearly
always more time consuming than reading comics or watching a movie. Aside from
that, there isn’t really a downside. It’s quite nice to have SUR there as an
excuse to read books I’ve been wanting to read for years but haven’t because I
was distracted by other things.
One of my goals
this year was to focus a bit more on comics and I didn’t really do that. I
stayed pretty consistent compared to 2013. For next year I’m hoping to increase
the amount of comic-centric posts and I’ve got a reread project in the works.
I’ll be announcing more about that in the future.
One of the
reasons I want to read and blog about more comics is that I find they are generally
easier to write about, though that’s not always the case. I read two volumes of
Wonder Woman by Brian Azzarello,
Cliff Chiang, Tony Akins, and Dan Green that I simply couldn’t bring myself to
write about. It was, for better or worse, a very precise continuation of the
previous two volumes. Any commentary I had on the first volumes can be applied
directly to the following two volumes. The consistency in the writer and the
art team as well as the progression of one large storyline, as opposed to one
story per volume, left me at a loss for words. I like it as much as the
previous volumes but I have no original comments to make about it. The more I
thought about it and the more I tried to write something worthwhile,
entertaining or informative it just sounded terrible and forced. Naturally I
abandoned it.
That’s just one
of many examples of posts or projects that I started and abandoned. Sometimes,
when projects are concerned, I’ve written a couple posts from start to finish
only to abandon the entire project before I’ve uploaded even a single post. The
texts that are ready to be uploaded but I keep them tucked away on my hard
drive because they don’t really belong anywhere else now that I’ve decided to
stop working on the project. I might post them some day but for now I’m content
to leave them off the blog.
This year I
became very comfortable with choosing not to write a post about a book or comic
that simply didn’t inspire me to write much about it. I find that writing
reviews always involves some work but while some posts are a chore and demand a
lot of work from me others just come pouring out. I often find that the easier
reviews to write are the ones I’m most satisfied with. When I stare at the
blank screen or when I take my terrible and mostly useless notes and begin to
write, it’s incredibly satisfying for words to come pouring out onto the
screen. I don’t care what they are, really. I don’t care if I end up with 2,000
words of messy thoughts and sentences that are only half good. As long as there
is something on the screen I can work with. It’s fun and exciting to be
inspired by something you read and have things about the work you’d like to
discuss and think about further. That’s what the draft process is all about for
me, just getting the ideas out.
Once I have that
it’s time to get to work. It’s time to unravel those thoughts and organize them
in a way that makes the ideas clearer to read and understand and to give the
text some structure and context so that it can be read without the need to have
also read the book that’s being reviewed. The second half of the process is
essentially the work part and sometimes I just don’t want to do it. Other times
the ideas and the commentary I came up with while writing a draft or making
notes just aren’t worth the time and effort I would put into cleaning it up and
making a real review out of it. It’s always work, even when the draft process
is simple and fun.
I’m sharing this
in my end of year post because I want to make it clear that writing reviews
isn’t always easy. Most of all it’s time consuming. If you’ve ever read a
review on SUR you’ll know that there are often typos and mistakes in my posts.
Guess what, after writing notes while reading, writing a draft and reworking it
to its final version (sometimes twice or more) I just don’t feel like reviewing
it yet another time to find typos. In short, writing for Shared Universe
Reviews at a rate of two posts per week is very time consuming. I like it, I
really do. It’s a small dream come true for me and it’s the result of a lot of
work but in 2015 I will be taking a couple of breaks. One might even be a
full-blown hiatus. I’ll be announcing them when the time comes and I’m certain
the breaks will be good for me but I’ll do my best to get a few guest
contributors to fill in the gaps. Aside from that I’ll try and continue my two
posts per week for the rest of the year but I will be moving away from the
reviews only format and working more towards an ongoing projects format.
I wrote one of my
most successful projects this year with my daily rewatch of Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team
back in July. It was tons of fun to watch that series again and it was very
satisfying to take a project to completion. That’s especially true because it
was a daily project that lasted over two weeks. It made me feel more confident
about my blog writing and it’s a boost I needed after having so many failed
projects like the continuously ignored Kung Fu Corner (I have to add more reviews there) and the potentially discontinued
PokéJournal.
It’s also been
interesting to note when I get caught up in a particular genre or franchise for
a few weeks. This year saw at least four such moments. Late winter and early
spring saw several new additions to The Blog Fantastic fantasy novel project.
It’s yet another example of a successful ongoing project and I expect to
continue expanding it next year. The three other franchise focuses weeks
included Star Wars reviews in May, a
lot of Gundam related stuff in the summer and plenty of Star Trek posts in the late Fall. It’s pretty great when you get to
immerse yourself in a specific category of works. You build momentum and it
kind of energizes you for a while. The only downside is that I eventual grow
tired of the subject and I have to move on to something else.
Last year I ended
the first part of my A Year in Review post with a list of 5 goals for 2014.
Here they are:
1-Stay the course. I’ve spread out my interested nicely but I need to
maintain the variety of the content on SUR.
2-Bring back some of the focus on comics while maintaining the variety of
genres and creators.
3-Give Star Wars novels and The Wheel of Time another
chance. That’s something I’ve already started. One of my friends gave me books
he no longer wanted with the suggestion I bring them to the used book store for
in store credits. I did just that during the holidays and I came back with
another the third volume of The Wheel of Time, a Redwall novel,
two Star Trek movie novelizations and a little stack of Star
Wars. I did some research and I came up with a list of Star Wars novels
that I think I will enjoy. If it doesn’t work now, it might be the end of my
flirtation with the Expanded Universe and I’ll stick to the movies (well, the
first six episodes anyway).
4-Complete and post the Secret Sibling blog project.
5-Get guest contributors to the blog. I have nerdy friends but I need to
convince them to contribute to SUR. Guys, all I need is one post and it can be
on nearly anything. You know you want to do it.
For those keeping
score at home you’ll notice that I did alright. Let’s check out those items one
at a time. Item 1: I think I did keep the variety on SUR. It’s tough going
sometimes because I put a lot of effort to keep up regular content at the rate
of two posts per week. That forces me to skip around from genre to genre or
from novels to comics and a little bit of film and TV. I’m generally pretty
scattered in my entertainment because I like a lot of variety. This goal
basically takes care of itself because of my personality and reading habits. This might be the easiest aspect of writing at
SUR. I like variety and that continues to work well for me as far as varied
content on the blog is concerned.
Item2: Well, I’m
basically par for the course on this one. I haven’t crunched the numbers but
looking quickly at the archives it looks as though I’ve written about comics
regularly throughout the year. I’ll continue to try bringing more focus to
comics as that’s the reason I originally starting blogging but also because I
love comics and I’d like to give them more exposure here at SUR.
Item 3: I’ve done
this! Woohoo, one goal I completely reached. Let’s talk about Star Wars first. I gave the Expanded
Universe another try and it was rather successful for a while. I read the first
ever EU novel, watched a Star Wars
documentary and I had a wonderful time reading two omnibus collections released
by Dark Horse. Everything was going so well in fact that I created a Star Wars page in order to put all of
the reviews and posts in one place. Then I read The Truce at Bakura and it killed any momentum I had built up
during the first half of the year. I promised more reviews to come on the Star Wars page and that statement still
holds true. A few weeks ago I watched the teaser trailer for Episode VII and
I’m jazzed about the franchise again despite my better judgement.
Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series has also been
given a second chance this year. Sure, I’ve only read two additional books (The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn) the page count is more than the page count of
all the Star Wars related books I
read this year and half of that was comics. Two books might not seem like a lot
but I spend a great deal of time in Jordan’s series. I have a couple more books
waiting for me and I’ll certainly be diving into the series again as I’ve been
enjoying each book more than the last. Next up is The Shadow Rising.
Item 4: Ah, the
Secret Sibling project. Well, we haven’t posted it this year but we’ve almost
completed it. It won’t be long now but I do fear that by announcing a secret
project in the works I may have contributed to some unnecessary hype (though
that’s also rather unlikely considering the low amount of regular visitors to
the site). Still, I’m excited about this and I’m hoping we get some good
conversations started in the comments.
Item 5: I failed
miserably at getting any guest contributors at SUR in 2014. I was hoping to
have my sister contribute with our project but that hasn’t yet seen the light
of day. 2015 looks good however. I’ve got a few potential contributors getting
ready and as I mentioned above it’s looking very promising that my sister and I
will post our project up in a few months’ time.
Goals for 2015: I
won’t get into details just now but I have two big ongoing projects I’ll be
working on next year. I’m really looking forward to finally post the project my
sister and I have been working on for roughly 18 months now. I’m also looking
forward to adding a few guest contributors as part of one of the two big
projects.
Overall, this
year has been a big success. I like the variety of content I’ve developed on
SUR and the blog is essentially the same as last year but that’s a good thing.
I like science fiction, fantasy and comics and you can see that very clearly
when looking at the archives. It’s all there. They’re my main interests and I
write about them in earnest. The only area in which I’d like to improve is
writing about things I’ve already watched or read. It’s mostly the comics that
I’ve already read and enjoyed that I’d now like to go reread and write about.
One of my main projects this year will be a reread of one of my favourite comic
series ever. I’m very excited to start but I won’t say anymore here as I’ll be
writing an introductory post for it specifically in a couple of weeks. I also
want to pull away a bit from straight-up reviews. Working on this comic book
reread project will help with that as I’ll be discussion the inner workings of
the comics and analysing it throughout the reread. More details on that in a
couple of weeks.
In a few days’
time I’ll be posting the second part of my Year in Review posts by listing the
worst books I read last year.
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