The Beveled Edge is Back!

I know what you're thinking: It left?  I'm pretty sure there were only two people reading this thing before, and I'm pretty sure they were doing it out of obligation for a friend.  Not just because my crap wasn't all that impressive, but because I started writing less and less.  You could log on once a month and catch up on everything new within a minute.  So why re-vamp it?  For my own selfish reasons.  Maybe I feel like writing down the random stuff in my head instead of just thinking it.  Maybe I like the medium.  Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment.  I don't know.  Whatever the reason, though, it's back.

So why did the last version fail?  Well, many reasons.  Number one: I modeled it after the blog of a friend of mine who, unlike me, is an extensively educated, exhaustively practiced and frighteningly skilled fiction writer.  I came to the conclusion very quickly that it would take me years of practice and far more innate talent than I have to be able to write like him, and yet I still tried.  It's never a good idea to try to copy someone else's art.

Number two:  I held myself to a posting frequency standard that just wasn't feasible for me.  Which is why this time around I'm not going to make any claims to posting frequency.  If it happens once a week, great.  Once a month?  OK.  A few in a row?  Awesome.  But if I'm fried at the end of the day (which I am more often than not) and can't come up with anything, fine.

Number three, and most relevant to the new set-up of the blog:  Fiction isn't my forte.  Would I like to get better at it?  Sure.  But can I realistically expect myself to come up with something new and actually worthwhile every time I write?  Not a chance in hell.  I like fiction, I do.  But I've noticed a pattern in myself.  I tend to get into an idea, a story, and live there for a while.  Get to know the characters: their traits, their quirks, their failings, etc.  Plot is a secondary interest.  This probably doesn't make for good storytelling, but I've given up my dreams of being published.  I've also given up my dreams of coming up with short, interesting, funny, or in other ways worthwhile stories on the spot.  Doesn't work for me, so I'm gonna stop trying.

So what am I gonna do?  What the subtitle says: "Random musings".  My thoughts, my impressions of various things, my opinion, just random stuff.  Maybe every now and again some fiction will find its way in there.  But I'm not gonna force it.  I'm gonna write whatever the hell I feel like writing which is, quite arguably, what I should've done in the first place.

Will it be interesting to read?  I haven't the foggiest.  And for the first time, I don't really care.  Although I have not done the research to back this up I'm pretty confident that there are a lot of blogs out there containing much stupider shit than this one will.  Will it be as good as many?  Not a chance!  Will it be as bad as some?  I don't think so.  It'll be whatever the hell it will be and I will, for the very first time since starting it, leave it the hell alone.

If you want read it, have at.  If you don't, keep clicking to the next blog.  If you like it, awesome.  If you don't, oh well.  Maybe it'll evolve into something worthwhile.  Maybe it'll deteriorate into something so stupid even I can't stomach it.  I'm not gonna predict either way.  I'm just going to write, and see where it goes.  It worked for NaNoWriMo.  When I forced myself to let go of the idea of what I thought my story should be it actually started coming out.  When I tried to fit it to some ideal in my head it stalled, every time.  So I let it go, and I'm sure that in the pages and pages of crap there is actually some worth while stuff.  Maybe in the many blogs that are to come they'll be something else worthwhile.  I hope so.