I’ve been blogging for almost four years now. Along the way I’ve scrounged for content in all sorts of places, picked up and discarded ideas, experimented with format and topics, alternately found inspiration from or been absolutely drained by my university classes, and pretended to some sort of credibility as giver of writing advice while failing to consistently practice my own writing. My two rather inglorious attempts at doing NaNoWriMo attest to the fact. Is that stopping me from harbouring secret intentions of doing it this year? Well, I guess it’s not so “secret” anymore if I tell you the surprising answer to that rhetorical question is no.
So why do I keep showing up here? Why, while much more fascinating (to me) narratives sit half-completed or just tantalizing me with their beginning stages, do I continue to return to the scene of the crime that is my creation of this blog in December 2018?
Well, at the very least, this blog is practice. It is both practice at writing and also writing as a practice.
This blog is proof of time put in to exercise writing, regardless of whether it can be said to have gotten tangibly better or more consistent or not. It’s an interesting record of what I was thinking about, what I deemed interesting or important enough to take to time to communicate and formulate into a post on this blog for whoever might happen to see it.
So as I was thinking about this season, I decided to post a retrospective of three of my previous blog posts that feel autumnal to me, whether they were actually designed that way or the topic just happens to fit. Hopefully you find something enjoyable amongst these spectres of writings past.
Fall is here. In some places, it seems to have already come and gone as snows come more frequently and stay longer before one day the blanket never entirely leaves, just gets deeper. A couple of years ago, I had something to say about why books always seem part of the cozy aesthetics in the fall. It turned into a bit of a pseudo-intellectual argument with dubious claims supplied as evidence, but I enjoyed writing it and maybe some of the ideas will make sense to you as it did to me. Click on the image to read this post.
Remember when I said that university alternately motivated and stymied my blogging? Well, at one point I thought it a brilliant idea to convert some of my comments from my old first-year English class discussion topics into a series of blog posts. I actually did complete the series and you can find all of those posts in the tab at the top of my blog: On-Line English Lit Discussion. Here, you can read one on the topic of the supernatural and what draws people to it, to fit in with the impending Halloween.
A testament to my demonstrated inability to finish things I start, this last entry made in my 100 Classic Book Suggestions series only brough the list up to 50. I don’t recall why I never picked up the next category of books, whether it was indecision about what to include or increasing disinterest (on my part and on the part of readers) but regardless, the list of “100” books sits at half its advertised number to this day. Read the post that ended it all, (perhaps?) never to be resumed, and maybe find some good seasonal recommendations in the list while you’re at it.
Taking the time to read all three posts, you might notice a common mention cropping up in each. I am nothing if not serious about boosting my favourite authors and ideas of theirs I particularly like. If you do catch the recurring theme, post your finding in the comments!
Fictitiously Yours 