I do a lot in terms of the communication of ideas. My courses for the past four years have been very writing intensive and ultimately, to my dismay, my film courses have focused less on how to actually make a movie and more on how to analyze one. Despite my frustration with the lack of film production education, I have been fortunate to have had my papers graded by several professors who grade with varying levels of intensity. At the end of the day, I have learned how to write college level papers and, if grades are a valid indication of quality, write them well.
But writing is not limited to formatting and styles dictated by universities and often subpar high school English teachers. It can take on many forms and is not an entity that fits easily into a box. While rules of syntax and grammar remain relatively unchanged, language, ideas, and the written communication of those ideas are constantly evolving. With the emergence of the internet and blogging, composition structure has been called into question. Even before blogs, there were authors who sought to break the mold by challenging the conventions of writing. Now, it seems as if everyone and their mother runs a blog, and this is marvelous.
From a certain perspective, I am a blogger. While I do not own a website domain or use Tumblr to express myself, I do run a podcast (soon to be two). In my podcast, I communicate my ideas to a larger audience about a specific topic of my own interest: Superman. If blogging is merely the communication of your ideas and interests through the internet on a designated space, then I am a blogger. My blog just happens to be audio-based.
For the past two years, I have been hosting my podcast and have earned a constantly growing fanbase. But it is always easier to speak your ideas than it is to write them down for the world to see. Creating a meaningful combination of words and structuring those clusters into a coherent set of ideas that simultaneously exude personality is an art and a skill that takes time to develop. I had tried my hand at it before with a freelance piece I had written for the Superman Homepage, but my writing still had an air of formality about it.
In taking this course, I am finally given a chance to break out of that college-style writing mentality, even if only for a semester. Additionally, I will be given the opportunity to write further about things that interest me. While I love film and one day hope to have a career in the industry, there are only so many analysis papers a guy can write before he becomes restless. Writing blog-style pieces is a nice change of pace and the concept is not terribly difficult to grasp.
In Alex Reid’s Why Blog? Searching for Writing on the Web, the specifics of blogging are defined for those uninitiated with the form. A blog can be about anything that happens to interest the author. Reid also states that blogging is a good habit to get into. Because blogs are, for the most part, independently run, the frequency of postings and the material posted is entirely based upon the author. There are no due dates or assigned subjects, meaning that the maintaining of a blog must come from the author’s desire to write.
Of course, to be encouraged to continuously write about a topic, one must have a topic that interests them personally. For instance, I love film, comic books, and music. I might write about one or all of these things as it would be easy for me to do so. However, it might be difficult to find a topic that is interesting for the author to write about. This is where Ballenger’s text comes into play.
A topic may not initially be interesting at first glance, but sometimes, a different approach might need to be taken. In reporting, this is called “finding the angle.” For example, I’m not terribly interested in French New Wave cinema. I find a majority of the films to be pretentiously artsy with little to no substance to justify its avant garde approach. But if I were to look at it from a different angle and wrote about how French New Wave cinema influenced filmmakers that emerged during the New Hollywood era, I would have more interest in writing about the subject.
Both Reid and Ballenger proclaim that any topic can be an interesting topic, and that blogging can be an effective tool to reinvigorate the author’s desire to write. Sometimes, a new approach is required, but each topic has the potential to be engaging. Anyone can be a blogger. All you need is a computer, connection to the internet, and a topic that continuously motivates you to write.