My Bloggings in 2013

That title began as a typo. It looks cute, so I’m keeping it. Happy New Year, everyone!

In order to maintain discipline in blogging regularly, I feel some resolutions are in order. I like how my blog has grown over the last year, but there are plenty of uncharted depths remaining. My hope is that this blog can build a sort of online community. That requires a lot more page views, but a million views won’t mean a thing if people only glance at a post and leave. Every day, I’m going to try to be a better writer. That goal is a no-brainer. Let’s get more specific.

I’m not superstitious, but I’m not crazy about the number 13. If you hold my hand, I think I can get through this.

I tried three features over the past year or so, the point of which was to keep me writing/posting regularly. The “words” posts eventually became tedious; linguistics isn’t really my thing, but it was valuable for me to learn that. The “readings” posts got old even faster, as they felt even less like actual writing and presented me with the exhausting challenge of finding interesting articles every (two) week(s). Via trackbacks, they were a nice way of advertising my blog, but little more. The paintings I shared on the blog earlier in the year were also little more than free advertising. They’ve given me more page views than almost anything I’ve written, but so what? I’ve begun slowly phasing them out and moving them over to my Tumblr page. They fit a lot better there anyway.

Three wildly diverse attempts, three failures. All right, they weren’t failures if they got someone to look at my blog, learn an interesting word, read an interesting article, or meet a beautiful painting. But I’ve decided I need to be a lot more focused, build something more coherent. So I’ve already come up with a new monthly feature: a post about one of my all-time favorite movies. For some reason, I’ve hesitated in the past about making this essentially a movie-review blog, but there’s really nothing I enjoy writing about more. Having built up a Blu-ray collection over the past year, I now have a lot of great movies at my fingertips, and it’s about time I dived in.

There are two possible careers I would consider a dream come true to have: first, movie criticism, and second, screenwriting. I’m going to try them both this year. I will be working on some scripts, and I may share something about them on this blog at some point, bearing in mind Stephen King’s admonition to “write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.” So don’t look for anything in that vein right away, but maybe later in the year.

That summarizes the new direction I’m planning. For the sake of commitment and to build a modicum of anticipation, here are the posts I’m going to be writing in the coming weeks:

• The 2013 Oscar Preview! (This Thursday, when the nominees are announced)
• A post in praise of YouTube, comparable to my Twitter post
• Double Feature: La Belle et la Bête (1946) and Beauty and the Beast (1991)
• My Favorite Movies: Once Upon a Time in the West