The Unexpected Benefits of Blogging

Given that my previous experience of blogging was a rather embarrassing livejournal of personal moans and groans, this has still felt like my first attempt at it, or at least the first time it's been less influenced by real life drama. One year on, I felt like looking back at how it's gone and my thoughts for the future. I didn't really have any expectations of it to begin with, other than a place to put my thoughts. I know I had a lot of fear about somehow receiving the wrath of the internet but that hasn't really materialised. I'm now always happy to get a notification of a new comment since they come so infrequently.

The closest I've got to an argument was in the comments for Fixing the Star Wars prequels, where I broke my promise of responding to every comment when someone stated they'd 'read' the Red Letter Media reviews. Ironically this has turned out to be my most viewed post overall this year, with a total of 188 views. Given that it was only some basic thoughts on a news article I'm not quite sure why it keeps bringing more people to it, other than "how to fix the star wars prequels" being a rather popular google search it seems.

Despite having low personal expectations, I think that writing has brought a lot of unexpected benefits. I would never have imagined I could be featured on another website at the start of the year but a friend suggested I submit something to Art Fist and I've been very humbled to be featured there. People have been very complementary about my writing on a personal level too and it's lead to me getting more involved in writing pieces for work. And a comment on On Writing Criticism from someone who I've learnt a lot about writing was a definite personal highlight.

If I was potentially starting to think a bit much of myself I have also received some helpful criticism recently, which showed some areas that need work. Despite reading about how to edit and make your writing concise, it's something I haven't always done and I felt really lazy when someone went over my review of Dust: An Elysian Tail, pointing out things that were unnecessary. This reminds me that there is more to writing than just letting your thoughts spill out onto the page and then publishing them, so until that kind of concise writing comes naturally it will occasionally feel like work.

More and more I'm recognising the importance of writing ideas down when they first come to me. That nagging feeling of an idea buzzing around your head is so often replaced with frustration when you feel you had more to say if you wait too long. I've had a notebook for a while but have only recently started to use it frequently (before now, my review of Looper was the only piece I roughed out on paper before typing up). Another good piece of advice I haven't taken was to use some form of voice recorder to quickly note down your thoughts, which almost everyone with a smartphone can easily do now. Eventually the desperation to record a thought might override my dislike of hearing my own voice.

I know that my pace has slowed down a little towards the end of the year but I'm hoping that I won't lose the writing bug. Although I've tried to avoid bringing up personal information, there are perhaps some real life reasons for this, as I've moved jobs back into the games industry and I'm also going to be a father in a few months. Combined with the fact that I've missed a ton of big cinema releases, while making very slow progress through the one big game I've bought recently, there hasn't been as much to write about. I have endeavoured to keep writing though and have found a site called 750words to be pretty useful for keeping at it daily, as well as for keeping a play diary of sorts for games that take a long time to finish. Sometimes I can feel this imaginary pressure to post something about games or films soon after their release date but I keep trying to ignore that and go at my own pace.

To finish on one last unexpected benefit, I would say that sometimes I've been surprised at how writing has helped re-connect with friends in a different way. I ended up having some good discussions on Facebook after writing about Attack the Block, with people who I perhaps wouldn't have expected to talk about it otherwise. So often I think you can get into a pattern of nostalgia when talking to old school friends and the like, so it was different to discuss another topic and also learn about what they're doing now that I might not have asked directly. I've also found friends who I share interests with that I hadn't realised before, which on a personal level is probably more rewarding than 4500 page views (a lot of which seemed to be Russian scamsters by my reckoning).