Friday 28 February 2014

see you on the other side

(David Gray - The Other Side)



It is time, I am afraid, for sevenhundredwords to come to an end. Over the last few weeks I got the idea of redesigning the blog, and renaming it, and then decided that in fact I would prefer to start completely afresh. I intend to leave these pages here for now, if only to redirect people to the new page, which I am very excited about.

The main reason for this decision has been to rid myself of the enforced word count. I didn't know when I started what the reality of blogging is, and I quite quickly found the need to always write seven hundred words quite limiting. Often I went over by a few words here or there, and that wasn't ever really a problem, I do enjoy editing as I thought. The bigger problem was definitely those days when I had something to write, but it was nowhere near enough to reach my target.

On those days it lost all its enjoyment, either I would not bother writing at all, or stare at half written posts trying to pad them out, when in truth I was happy to stop at what I had written. So many of the blogs I enjoy are about simplicity, and I felt that I was becoming unnecessarily overcomplicated, like quite often my posts got lost part way through.

The other element, is that writing at length, tends towards the introspective, and the blog felt like it delved, a little too regularly, into the deep and meaningful. It is difficult to write something so long and keep it upbeat and lighthearted throughout, it is too tempting to err into overanalysis.

It is fitting that as I draw this blog to a close I can share the news that I passed my exam, as it seemed to be in the background in most of the posts. Not many of our group passed, it has a notoriously low pass rate, so I feel very lucky not to have face it again, although a little disappointed that those of us who went through all of the revision together haven't all had the same positive outcome. Personally though I am very glad to consider that bit of my life done with.

We had a weekend away booked and the results came through on the Saturday morning before we left. It was lovely to go away and celebrate, although The Husband's Godfather, who he was very close to, died unexpectedly the same week, so as has been often the case for us in recent times, the celebrations were bittersweet.

I have to confess that some of the other projects I linked in with, such as the year in books, and project 365 have been forgotten whilst I focussed on the new blog. It was amazing how many attempts it took to find a name that I liked and that was available. I intend to pick them back up, although admittedly I am finding the new camera difficult to get to grips with, if anyone has any hints for beginners feel free to share them, here or on the new site.

I wanted to write the last post today, and start tomorrow with a new blog ready to go. I have set up a new email account and twitter handle too. I will link to the blog here (when the first post has gone live), and I hope if any of you happen upon this post you will head over to my new blog and check it out. I had a lovely old time playing with html code and creating the layout, and considering how happy I was with this site when I made it, I can't believe how much more I love the new one.

I have very much enjoyed my first foray into proper blogging, and all of the lovely blogs, and bloggers, I have come across along the way. I can't wait to get going again, it feels like the first day of a new school, or a lovely new notebook, waiting to fill with my neatest writing! Thanks for keeping me company so far, and hopefully I will hear from you on the other side.

2 comments:

  1. Aha! I agree that the 700 word target is too high and very difficult to attain! I remember reading a tweet when I first started about keeping blog posts to 400-500 words, it always made sense to me.

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    1. Thanks so much for commenting :) funny you say that, I word counted yesterday's post on whatkatiewrote out of curiosity and it was just over 400!

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