And here I was saying I was being slack nearly two months ago for not posting in a month. Fancy that.
So I could defend my inaction with a slew of excuses and rationale of all descriptions, much of which would be valid, but there’s really no point to that. Instead, I will point out at least one observation I’ve made about this whole thing: the conversational and casual approach to a standard blog post was proving to be at odds for some of the article-esque pieces I was writing.
For example, I currently have a half finished draft that was started but a few days since my last post about Fire Emblem Echoes. The reason I didn’t finish and post that was mostly because it was growing increasingly detailed and formal, so I wanted to be thorough and do it properly. It’s the kind of thing I might have posted on a website with more traffic and more structure, were more of them available to me that might actually have a readership for that kind of stuff.
As it stands, however, there’s only ever a handful of people reading this blog already, and I’m not sure how well that would be received. Moreover, I felt that since I was straying from the more casual nature of this blog in general, I wasn’t really sure if there was much of a point going ahead with the post. Whatever my reasoning, the point remained that I lost the drive to keep working on it, trapped as it was between mediums and approaches, so it has languished. The longer it took, the less fresh Fire Emblem was in my mind, and now it feels like the timing for that post has well and truly sailed.
So this is a problem. I don’t like to leave things unfinished and scrap them in favour of other stuff… yet at the same time, I’m somewhat bad at maintaining a structured approach and getting the unfinished pieces completed. Couple all of that with the other unrelated issues and distractions of the past quarter year, and here’s where we stand with Delfeir vs. the Backlog.
At the moment, my writing is definitely in a slump. With a lack of dedicated readers — and rightfully so given that this blog lacks a dedicated and reliable writer — it’s hard to motivate myself to push my drives into seeing it further. At the same time, other websites are somewhat out of reach now, as I’ve become somewhat distant with GameSkinny and don’t really have other places to currently write for that might get the viewers I’d like to reach.
Still, at the end of the day, I am reminded of the fact that as much as I write to entertain and share my stories and viewpoints with readers, I’m mostly still doing this for the enjoyment I draw from writing. I like doing this stuff and I don’t want to just give it up. As such, if I lack the other platforms to kill two birds with one stone, I shall just have to be satisfied with the one I had.
So what am I going to do with this blog? Well, rather than keep writing in that awkward space between conversational blog posts like this one and proper articles like I publish elsewhere, I’m going to simply set aside a schedule to accomplish both.
I’ve yet to set days for this, but here are my current plans: I’m going to try and update this blog three times a week. There’ll be a schedule for at least two of these posts on spaced out days once I set it up. One post per week will be a more conversational run-down of where I’ve been at for the past week in terms of gaming and working on the Backlog that this page is titled after. Another post each week will be a more dedicated article going into either a specific game, mechanic, narrative element etc. of something I’ve played recently and diving more deeply into that. Reviews may fall under this if appropriate, but we’ll see.
If I can manage it, I’ll try to get a third post going as well. If the scheduled day’s post is on more recent games, this third post will probably be about other topics entirely. They might be retrospectives, rambling thoughts on a specific topic, or just some kind of video game related pondering. Either way, the guidelines will be looser on this one so it’ll largely just be a free post. Might set a day for it, might just post these when I feel like it, but either way I’ll be trying for it.
Admittedly, I’m not the greatest at planning ahead or keeping to a schedule historically, so I have no idea if I’ll actually be successful with this endeavour. But it’s still a goal I’m going to set myself and then try to work towards. So keep an eye on this space, and hopefully I’ll get that set up within the next week and lay out what days will see what posts.
If I don’t post that soon, well… I’ll just have to go back to the drawing board and try something else again instead! Either way, I don’t just want this blog to forever collect dust, just like I don’t want my video game related writing to fade away.
Thoughts, feedback, opinions and suggestions would be much appreciated on this, but even if I’m writing to an audience of none I shall still keep trying this for my own entertainment. Let’s see what happens then.
