A Challenge to my sensibilities

If there's one thing this blog emphatically isn't about, it's linking to other, better blogs and telling my readers to go there and read the interesting things they've said. Which is why I do that exact thing only every once in a while and only when I really want to and can't resist the urge. And now Dirty Feed, which I only just linked to in my blog a month ago, has posted a list of blog-related questions that I really wanted to answer too, and it just feels like I'm devoting my entire bloggery to leeching off the popularity of someone else if I do another post about this other blog. But I'm going to do it anyway, so never mind.

Actually, my first thought on seeing that post on that blog was "Ooh, if I'm lucky, Christopher Wickham - a regular reader of Dirty Feed with his own really cool blog which I haven't previously linked to - will take those questions and answer them, so I can link to him and redress the universal balance." But he hasn't yet, so I can only recommend that you all go there and read his extremely cool posts about old British comics in particular!

So I'm just going to answer these questions now. Because they get into my whole unique philosophy about blogging, and provide fascinating insight into the Mind of Zoomy...

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

Someone told me that blogs are a thing now, so I created one. Then a bit later, I decided to start having a blog that I updated on a daily basis, all about my life and anything I found interesting. And it was fun and (with hindsight) a very useful tool for reminding me what I was doing nearly twenty years ago!

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I'm "managing my blog" using Blogger. Which I found back in 2004 by being top of a google search, even though Google probably didn't own them yet. And I've used it ever since, in the most basic format. And it works just fine! This is the thing - there are other platforms that let you do more fancy things, and for that matter Blogger lets you do more fancy things with your blog, but I've always wanted this to be the most stripped-to-the-basics kind of blog it's possible to have - default formats and everything. I always think that if you focus on style over substance, it's a terrible way to go. Yes, even if there's nothing in your blog that could possibly be described as "substance".

Although I did change the template after a few years to one that has 'next post' and 'previous post' buttons, which are quite handy for people reading through it. But it's another firm principle of mine that I never use tags to categorise my posts by subject! I've always felt that the ideal reader of this blog is someone who reads the whole thing, whatever I'm choosing to ramble about today!

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

Just click the "Compose" button on Blogger, and a box pops up to write in. If you're feeling fancy, and want to add links or something, you can click the 'HTML' button and add commands in little pointy brackets < >, and I sometimes feel the urge to do something clever with that, like the footnotes in this one, but mostly I don't. You can add pictures to your post really easily here, and really, Blogger has everything you could wish for.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

There's no regular routine or pattern here. Sometimes I'm in the mood to write something epic, sometimes I'm not. It's invariably a spur-of-the-moment thing, even if it's a post about comics that takes a huge amount of research and scanning or finding pictures to illustrate it.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

Immediately after writing, with almost no exceptions. I've got one half-written draft that's been sitting in my folder for years (about Marvel comics of summer 1963) that I might finish one day, but otherwise it's publish straight away without a thought for the possible consequences!

What are you generally interested in writing about?

Now that's the thing. In the early days, I remember saying most of my posts would revolve around memory, othello, comics and cartoons, and I think the blog has mostly stuck to that kind of thing over the years, along with occasional vague references to things I'm doing in normal life. Excel competitions have become a regular subject in recent times, and another category that shows up a fair bit is Victorian novels, but the original guiding thought here was that it should always be a mixture of everything I find interesting, rather than have a central 'theme' to the things I blog about.

Who are you writing for?

Now, this is a good question. Ideally, I'm writing for friends who are interested in maybe one or even none of the subjects I write about, but read my blog anyway out of politeness, and find something else they can be interested in too! When someone says to me something like "I even liked that thing you wrote about comics the other day, even though I'm not into that stuff", I feel like my work here is done. That's a genuine quote, and it was about my Skull the Slayer post, which is a great example of my unnecessarily-exhaustive chronicling of an obscure piece of comics history, so it's delightful to find someone reading it and liking what they read!

I mean, at heart, I'm basically writing for my own amusement, but it really is the icing on the cake when I find that someone else out there actually likes to read it!

What’s your favorite post on your blog?

The ones I particularly like are probably that kind of comic post referenced there, especially if I dig up some historical context or supporting material that probably nobody's documented in exactly that way before. This post about Shermy is a great example that I'm proud of, combining the newspaper comics, cartoons and extra features like the TV Guide and Mad Magazine that featured our hero. Or the complete history of Manikin, a superhero nobody in the world is interested in except maybe a few wonderful weirdos. I think it's a fine example of almost-complete documenting of Whit's life - I'm still torn about whether I should have included a reference to the Marvel Age that mentions him, and maybe one day I'll go back and add it in, but that's another story. I also really love when I get into detailing my thought processes during memory competitions, because they're fun to look back on in the future, and I think a lot of people like to read them. But perhaps my favourite posts of all are when I've chronicled something that isn't widely known, and other people have found it and been delighted with it! The best of these is when I listed Kid Jensen's Favourite Chart Breakers - the comments section of that, with more and more people coming across it years and years after I wrote it and rediscovering a piece of their childhood, is a delight to experience! 

I'm also very fond of my family tree research - the last one of those three links is the kind of fun detail you can pick up when you're digging into things, and quite apart from the way this kind of post has connected me with family members I never knew existed, it's provided entertaining things like my great-grandparents' wedding certificate, which provokes a whole lot of discussion! And even when my obsessive tendencies extend to transcribing an entire 25-minute cartoon and highlighting the bits that were cut out of it to trim it for time, I feel a great sense of accomplishment on producing something I can share with equally interested readers! Really, I could go on and on for pages about favourite posts on my blog - it's very much a way to express myself about whatever subject is on my mind. For one final fave, I'll just share this message of affection to my brother, hidden in a post about a very relevant episode of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

Never! My future plans for the blog are to keep doing things exactly the same way I've always done! Consistency is victory, as Ultra Magnus tells us!

Next?

This is where you "tag" other people, apparently, and get them to do these questions. That's a bit "professional blogger community" for me, but if you'd like to answer these questions, I'd be fascinated to see what you have to say!