Tuesday 4 June 2013

the nerve to say hello

(Train - Marry Me)

Hello. That wasn’t so hard actually, but I imagine the remaining 699 words might require a little more thought. And I don’t doubt that pressing the publish button will induce plenty of nerves. For now, I will refrain from succumbing to those nerves, and try to construct something pertaining to a blog post. Blogging has long been an ambition, fuelled by a love of writing since childhood, and an excessive amount of time spent lurking on other people’s blogs (see the sidebar for some of my most frequent haunts).

Ideally, I envisage early mornings spent composing pithy passages before the working day, artfully illustrating them using my newly formed photographic finesse, and witty banter with some charming commenters. However, I am also a realist. I am not a morning person, blurry snaps on a cameraphone are as creative as I get and I find banter semi-confrontational. Charming comments I shall leave in your hands.

(example of my cameraphone handiwork from recent months  -  and this was the best I could find)


In truth, this is not my first blog, but as evidence of all previous forays were hastily deleted, I can pretend that it is.  This time I feel slightly more prepared. By which I mean I have spent some time googling about blogging, and then infinitely more time playing with the page layout and altering the colour scheme. The toughest call has been what to call this blog, where to focus the content, and as may be obvious, I have been characteristically indecisive, and decided to keep it broad.

What I have done, is set myself a word limit. Every post will have the same word count. This chap isn’t keen on the idea. This chap even less so. (See – I genuinely did do some research). However, the lack of a title had been holding me back for too long. I also work well with structure and deadlines. I think that knowing when I start a post that it has to end at a given point will make it easier for me to start typing. And at least any readers I do have know what they are letting themselves in for when they click through to a new post. The geek in me (it is not particularly well hidden) also enjoys editing and refining written work so I don’t anticipate coming to resent the decision, but only time will truly tell.

Seven hundred words isn’t an entirely arbitrary choice. Whilst reading about optimal SEO sent me to sleep (I’m not quite that much of a geek), I considered what posts I enjoy and why I want to blog. I wanted the capacity to write about topics without too much restriction but knew that to write regularly in the longer term, a lengthy word count would become prohibitive. Hopefully this will strike the right balance, and seems to have finally provided me with a route into blogging that although limiting words, should not limit content .

I think it is only polite to use this post to introduce myself. It is an entirely unremarkable biography, but perhaps some brief demographics may help for you to create a much more exciting version in your own imagination. I am in my late twenties, and live in England. I am recently married, and very much a home-girl (in the family-oriented manner, rather than the trendy down-with-the-kids version), and have never lived particularly far from home. I do enjoy travelling though, and theatre, reading and music. I’m not the sportiest girl by any means but have recently ventured to the local gym in an attempt to kindle an interest, it is a work in progress. I am also an amateur foodie, which really just means I enjoy eating out, reading food blogs, and cooking/baking, and I predict a large proportion of future posts will be on exactly those topics.

Hypocritical as it is, coming from a long-time lurker, I would love to hear from any readers, so comment at leisure. In the meantime I will go along quite happily writing to the ether. I hope future posts will come more naturally, and improve with more practice. But for now I shall draw this to a close, as I think that is enough of an introduction, and my word count is up. 

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