I love to blog.
Back, oh say... ten years ago? Not so much. In fact, my first post here at Do Some Damage started out by saying I really didn't like blogging all that much. Blogs on the publishing scene had been around for a good 5-7 years, and it felt like anything you could talk about in writing had been covered. I'd read so many "How To" write certain kinds of scenes that I was losing my mind.
But now? Ten years later?
I feel like the blog post is a lost art. Never would have expected that ten years ago, but with the advent of Facebook Status updates, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and whatever the heck Tik Tok is (it's been ten years, I'm almost 40 so I'm an old man now)... you don't get the nuance of a good blog post. Not many people want to read 1,000 words on the state of publishing when you can get someone boiling it down to 280 characters in a tweet.
The best blog posts are like a cross between a good 3 tweet thread and a think piece someone worked seven years on. They are the first draft of an essay. Kind of jumbled thoughts, maybe some typos (Hey! Don't judge my fat fingers), and a bunch of cool nuggets of information.
On Twitter, I can post "Hey, the way the Hulk brought everyone back in Endgame meant those guys who flew the helicopter came back in midair. But no chopper." But in a blog post, I can go into the deep ramifications of the way Hulk brought people back meant that millions of people who were flying on planes, or crossing the street or doing something completely mundane woke up and were immediately killed. And, in a solid think piece, I'd have written it all months ago and really revised it and published it about the time The Eternals hits the big screen.
Yeah, so Twitter is an immediate "Should I even say this out loud" thought. Blogs are the deeper version of that.
Which brings us to what I really like.. about books, about movies, about music and what blogs often represent. They are the nitty gritty. They are fast and mean and funny. They are a bit ragged. Sometimes people interpret them the way you don't expect and sometimes you aren't trying to be shocking at all, but the internet blows up about it. And sometimes you are trying to be shocking and you don't get your point across as well as you hope (because it's just a damn first draft) and the idea doesn't get any traction.
I don't blog as much as I used to. Hell, I hardly blog at all, except to cover Rutgers sports. When I have a book out, I love to reach out and do some guest post about how Jackson Donne went from being Elvis Cole to Joe Pike (sort of). Or how a high school basketball coach who was also a cop inspired a character of mine. And usually, I'm working out what I worked on on the page.
So, what's my point here?
Eh, it's a blog post so I'm not really sure. I wanted to celebrate 10 years of Do Some Damage. I wanted to keep it upbeat and bouncy. I didn't want to make any puns.
And I wanted to change my stance from ten years ago, because we all grow, we all learn and we all miss things. I love to blog. Not consistently, I don't have time for that, but you have to realize that--just like all kinds of writing--it's an art. A little grimy, a lot of fun, and a lot of work.
So, here's to Jay and Steve and all the other writers out there who posted on Do Some Damage for ten whole years.
What a great place to visit.
Back, oh say... ten years ago? Not so much. In fact, my first post here at Do Some Damage started out by saying I really didn't like blogging all that much. Blogs on the publishing scene had been around for a good 5-7 years, and it felt like anything you could talk about in writing had been covered. I'd read so many "How To" write certain kinds of scenes that I was losing my mind.
But now? Ten years later?
I feel like the blog post is a lost art. Never would have expected that ten years ago, but with the advent of Facebook Status updates, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and whatever the heck Tik Tok is (it's been ten years, I'm almost 40 so I'm an old man now)... you don't get the nuance of a good blog post. Not many people want to read 1,000 words on the state of publishing when you can get someone boiling it down to 280 characters in a tweet.
The best blog posts are like a cross between a good 3 tweet thread and a think piece someone worked seven years on. They are the first draft of an essay. Kind of jumbled thoughts, maybe some typos (Hey! Don't judge my fat fingers), and a bunch of cool nuggets of information.
On Twitter, I can post "Hey, the way the Hulk brought everyone back in Endgame meant those guys who flew the helicopter came back in midair. But no chopper." But in a blog post, I can go into the deep ramifications of the way Hulk brought people back meant that millions of people who were flying on planes, or crossing the street or doing something completely mundane woke up and were immediately killed. And, in a solid think piece, I'd have written it all months ago and really revised it and published it about the time The Eternals hits the big screen.
Yeah, so Twitter is an immediate "Should I even say this out loud" thought. Blogs are the deeper version of that.
Which brings us to what I really like.. about books, about movies, about music and what blogs often represent. They are the nitty gritty. They are fast and mean and funny. They are a bit ragged. Sometimes people interpret them the way you don't expect and sometimes you aren't trying to be shocking at all, but the internet blows up about it. And sometimes you are trying to be shocking and you don't get your point across as well as you hope (because it's just a damn first draft) and the idea doesn't get any traction.
I don't blog as much as I used to. Hell, I hardly blog at all, except to cover Rutgers sports. When I have a book out, I love to reach out and do some guest post about how Jackson Donne went from being Elvis Cole to Joe Pike (sort of). Or how a high school basketball coach who was also a cop inspired a character of mine. And usually, I'm working out what I worked on on the page.
So, what's my point here?
Eh, it's a blog post so I'm not really sure. I wanted to celebrate 10 years of Do Some Damage. I wanted to keep it upbeat and bouncy. I didn't want to make any puns.
And I wanted to change my stance from ten years ago, because we all grow, we all learn and we all miss things. I love to blog. Not consistently, I don't have time for that, but you have to realize that--just like all kinds of writing--it's an art. A little grimy, a lot of fun, and a lot of work.
So, here's to Jay and Steve and all the other writers out there who posted on Do Some Damage for ten whole years.
What a great place to visit.
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