Damn You! Be More Bloggy!

It’s apology time!

Darius in the past and Craig more recently have commented about my lack of posts; that I should “by more bloggy” to use Darius’s words. There are a few reasons I haven’t been more bloggy, and I’d like to illuminate them for you.

First, I’ve been extremely busy. Crunch will do that to you. That really isn’t an excuse though. I’ve had time to play games, so I should have time to blog. Thankfully, I won’t use that as my only excuse (like I do on my livejournal).

Second, I’d just like to say that every week or so, I have a set of drafts for 4 or 5 posts I want to get around to finishing. You’ll notice I’ve stopped posting promises for them. Included in this are posts about MDA story and levels of narrative, death in games, and one post (this one actually) about the assumptions of blogging. The reason I don’t post these is because I try very hard to work a lot of things out in my head before posting a full post to the blog. Sometimes, things don’t pan out, or I have a hard time getting them down on paper. Right now, I have a window open with a post called “From games to stories and back again,” a full response to Craig’s posts about story and gameplay. Unfortunately, the whole thing is so involved that I’ve had to rewrite it at least 4 times now. It’s slow going, and I don’t see my brain picking up the pace any time soon.

Lastly, I feel that there is a fundamental assumption you make when you’re writing a blog, and that is that people care about what you have to say. Sometimes (and this is not to sound self-loathing or anything) I’m not sure why people should care about what I have to say. In reality, I post more to hear people’s comments on things than to have them read what I think. Since I don’t really have a lot of readers, though, I don’t really get a lot of comments, and thus the cycle of not wanting to find the *time* to post has been tough.

Thankfully, for those of you that would rather hear what I have to say and not comment, Craig has given me a word of encouragement that makes me think that maybe there will be a few people that do want to read the long winded posts of an armature game theorist. So long as people don’t take random outbursts of complete theory too seriously (I’ll be the first to admit that some of what I say has no practical use in the real world), maybe I will start being a bit more “bloggy.” At least it might make a few people more happy.

4 Responses to “Damn You! Be More Bloggy!” »»

  1. Comment by Craig | 02/26/06 at 10:52 pm

    I don’t know any armature game theorists, but I’d like to. :)

    Listen, Raph is long-winded. You’re nearly terse. Perhaps I’d get sick of you if you posted as much as I do, but I doubt it.

  2. Comment by Darius K. | 02/27/06 at 8:12 am

    I am typically a paralyzed perfectionist when it comes to writing, which is why I specifically state that my networking series is a draft. Even Craig’s stuff is presented as sort of free-form rambling and not meant to be publishable quality (although some of it certainly is).

    I think that writing a blog post should be like writing an open draft. You’re putting up a first attempt, you get feedback from your readers, and then hey–go back and rewrite with that feedback in mind.

    If you have four or five pages of writing… well, if you are sure that the introduction section is good, post that by itself as part 1 of 4 in a series. The positive feedback you’ll get will motivate you to finish up the remaining parts.

  3. Comment by Duncan | 02/27/06 at 2:07 pm

    Wow. Sounds like me. Several posts that I want to write (usually in some form of discombobulation), too much to do and not enough time to get it all done. And I find that there is always more stuff to read. This means that I have to try and set aside time just to collect my thoughts and write.

    Keep writing and post it when you feel it is ready to be read. We’ll wait.

    Heck, while I’m waiting maybe I can finish my response to Craig’s story stuff too. :-P

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