Welcome one, welcome all. As I'm a writer, and have been for over 20 years in professional, marketing and print journalism contexts, this should, technically, be easy. My challenge, purely for the fun of it, and to myself alone, is as follows:
Write a minimum of 1,000 words of interesting, original copy that people might actually want to read, share or comment on every single day until further notice.
Simple, huh. Well, we'll see about that. I've staked my reputation on my ability to churn out interesting, well-researched and amusing copy for newspapers, the web and wherever its necessary before, but as is my wont, never tested the theory in practice. I think I'm a pretty good writer. Some pretty well-known people have been sent my scribblings and have been highly complementary, so why not try to build a definitive, evolving collection of thoughts, essays and opinions for posterity? I have a nice, fast computer, a short-term memory I can just about rely on, and a bunch of tales from the worlds of journalism, music, sport and culture to draw from. My interest base is very broad; my wife tells me I'm 'interested in lots of things - probably too many things if we're honest' and she's right. Then again, she's right about a great many things. Subscribe now to see just how right she is, if you like.
With all that said, I don't really have an overarching 'mission' for this blog, other than the wordcount target that gives it its name. There are of course driving forces behind the decision to start doing this, though, if I stop to think about them. So, let's see...
1. I am the world's greatest procrastinator. If Staring Out of the Window was an Olympic sport, they'd have to change the rules of the competition to stop me from winning every four years. I don't finish things well. I don't start things well. I have a million ideas, develop 20 of them a tiny bit, then ditch them at the first sign of boredom and then wonder why, at 41 years of age, I've never really finished anything I started myself from scratch. While I think that trait itself is quite common - especially in the writing community - but that doesn't make it OK or cool. So, having to write to a limit once every 24 hours is, as I've mentioned, a good discipline to foster, and that's what this is really about.
2. I have a lot of stories to tell, but other blogs to tell them in. As you'll find if you visit projectpeppercorn.blogspot.com, or if you connect with me on Facebook (facebook.com/aljones587, I think), I've had a pretty interesting set of circumstances dropped on my during my life - marriage, bereavement, working overseas, misc. travel, cancer, a crush on music in all its forms and so on. I think you'll like a few of the 'thousands' I drop on you from this unassuming little web portal, anyway.
3. But then again, why should you care? Who the hell am I, anyway? I should probably include some sort of Biography page in this somewhere so you know a bit more before we start prying around inside my mind, eh? While I'm at it, I think I'll create a schedule for myself, so that posts appear regularly and are distributed via Facebook (I don't use any other social media channels; one is surely enough). Given the - yes, I'll say it - extraordinary times we're living through, I think there'll be a mix of vaguely political wibbling on a Monday, music stuff on a Tuesday, personal projects or observations on Wednesdays, making Thursday the Day of Sports, Friday Interesting Sciency Shit Day, Saturday Celebrity Nonsense Day and Sunday Food, Wine and Frivolity Day. Yeah, that'll pretty much do it, content-plan wise. Crikey, some people pay agencies hundreds of pounds a day for that sort of 'multichannel content strategy bullshit', and here I am giving it out for free. Aren't I generous?
Of course, with all of this taking shape over the next couple of days, given the amount I've just tasked myself with writing on the regular, I'm also going to have to stagger the launch, so that I have a few posts in the can before I start. Since this is my baby, I get to build myself a week of grace before we go off properly. This is my show - I make the rules. If I want to write 365,000 words a year into this thing, making it by far the densest writing project I've done to date, I'm going to need a bit of a run-up, don't you think?
To ensure that this blog actually stays on target, like an X-Wing pilot back when Star Wars was good, I'll also be using a handy activity tracker built into the lovely interface at wordcounter.net to ensure that I've not under- or overwritten my latest dollop of nutritious word salad. Once things are up and running properly, of course, I'll be able to work on the blog interface and so on, making it look less and less like a horrid template as the days, mistakes and paragraphs pile up. I would also love some feedback and would welcome the opportunity to write guest-posts, enter competitions and other sundry writerly pursuits, so if you like what you read, and would like me to write for you in the future, just drop me a line here and I'm sure we can come to some kind of arrangement, as it were. I doubt anyone will be interested in collaborating on a couple of book ideas I've had knocking around for a few years without really progressing them, but if that's the case, I'd be more than happy to discuss them, of course.
So, having taken the last few paragraphs to lay out the plan, all that remains is for me to get off my rickety little soapbox and write some proper blog entries. Wish me luck, everybody!*
*And yes, that first draft is exactly 1,000 words. Told you I was good.
No comments:
Post a Comment