Pretentious Blogging Meme

These things are like a virus…

I caught wind of a voluntary blogger meme through theerivs over at A High Latency Life, and he picked it up from Tree of Life. I feel like I should change my blog tittle to Clearcasting Life just to fit the theme.

Anyway, this is a meme about writing, not about WoW. It is for bloggers, by bloggers, blah, blah, blah.

So with the “this is not about WoW” disclaimer out of the way, I will jump right into satisfying Keredria’s curiosity.

1. How long have you been blogging? What made you start? Who inspired you?

How the time flies, it has been very nearly 1 year since I started blogging. My first post went out on January 19th of 2009. I covered the why of the blog in that very first post, but a brief recap is that I needed a “dump” for the contents of my brain. My primary inspiration was Euripedes over at Critical QQ.

2. About how many hours a week would you estimate you spend on your blog?

Urrggg…. damned if I know. It’s something I always have open on the computer so I can take a quick note while I’m working. I would guess about 5-10 hours a week. Yeesh.

3. What kind of experience or background do you have with writing?

i r teknical ritur @ muh jerb.

I’m the one that takes a mish-mash of convoluted instructions, outdated flow charts, crumpled flip charts, “to-be process states,” and notes written on napkins and turn it into a legible, user-friendly document that tells people how to do their job. My goal is to make getting the information people need as painless as possible – no small feat in the insurance industry.

Other than that, I’ve dabbled in some poetry, wrote a song for my cousin’s band (which then promptly broke up so it never got looked at), and have half a dozen started stories laying about. I enjoy writing as a medium of expression; which is good because I can’t draw for crap.

4. Talk about how you come up with blog topics. Where do you get your ideas? What or who inspires you? Where and/or how do your brainstorming?

I keep scrap paper around me pretty much all the time. Someone does something stupid in a PuG? Screen shot and jot it down. Laying in bed and random question wanders through my brain? Jot it down and deal with it later.

Brainstorming is never a planned event, it’s usually more along the lines of “wow, this topic is a lot bigger than I originally thought it would be” and it gets broken up.

Other bloggers are always a good source of inspiration. Frequently there is a key phrase or comment response that triggers an avalanche of continued thought.

And if I wait long enough, someone will toss out another meme to blog about.

5. Do you have any blogging rules or guidelines you follow? Is there anything you will not blog about?

Are there rules I’m supposed to follow? No one gave me a rule book when I signed up for a blog so I’ve just kinda been winging it.

I try to keep the blog as WoW-centric as possible, with the occasional pirate item or personal news thrown in. I also will throw out links to web comics that I enjoy, it’s my way of saying “thanks” to those writers/artists that put out some great entertainment. I will not blog about theerivs’ penis, he does that enough for all of us.

I suppose my guidelines are mostly about providing reasonable protection to the people I write about. A very determined individual can probably track down most of the referenced people, but the casual reader doesn’t care to take the time to do so. I generally only use a player’s name with their permission. Even when the player is an absolute douchebag I would prefer to err on the side of “maybe they’re letting their little brother play or something.”

With the random pug feature, however, this policy may be changing. Some people are just too plain dumb/rude/arrogant/more bad adjectives to write off as a clueless kid behind the keyboard. Maybe if more of us in the community called people out for being asshats we could remove some of the anonymity of the internet and reduce the fuckwad result.

6. Do you have any sort of a publishing schedule in terms of day of week or topic? Where do you do your writing?

Generally speaking, Monday through Friday with some time off for holidays. Most of my readers seem to be reading from work, so why post if it’s not going to get read?

I do my writing from home, but I also work from home. So I write from home/work?

7. How many drafts of potential blog posts do you have right now? In what medium do you draft your posts? How often do you completely scratch or delete drafts or blog post ideas?

As of this very second, I have only this draft in progress. I have at least a dozen topics scratched out on bits of paper somewhere on my desk.

Previously I was drafting in Word (Open Office, actually) and then doing a copy/paste into WordPress. Then the spell check got much better in WordPress so I started working directly in it more often. Very long posts, the kind that get broken into multiple parts, I still will usually start outside of WordPress and transfer the completed pieces in.

I think I’ve only had one blog post idea that got scratched and that was only because I didn’t get around to finishing it before the timeliness of the situation had passed. Are people still interested in the whole turning XP off to twink in BGs thing?

8. If you had to leave your blog in your will to another blogger, who would you choose? To ask this in a slightly less morbid way, are there other blogs that you feel are similar to yours in content, style, or voice?

They say you can’t take it with you, but I can sure as hell set fire to it before I go so no one else can have it!

I would say that several blogs out there are similar in content, but I would like to think that we all have our own voice and style. I don’t think I would want to put anyone in the position of trying to be me, that sounds like a remix of the whole Ferraro fiasco.

There are a couple people I know that do not currently blog that I would like to see some posts from. The offer still stands for guest posts guys, you know who you are.

9. Has anything surprised you since you started blogging?

The fact that anyone reads me at all. Getting linked on wow.com (on a throw away rant post). Like theerivs pointed out, the throw away posts get tons of responses (usually pretty impassioned ones at that) and the thoughtful posts no one bats an eye at.

10. What are your goals or plans for your blog going forward? Any specific goals or plans for your blog in 2010?

Keep on trucking. I will probably continue to blog for as long as I play the game, and I don’t see myself quitting any time soon. The needle is in too deep and I would have no idea what to do with all that spare time.