On November 19th of 2007, I officially commenced blogging. A little more than 360 days later, I find myself a little older and a little wiser. May this enlightening trend continue.
Stellascript will be changing its format somewhat. Haiku Monday will stay the same – nothing like starting the week with 17 syllables. Haiku Friday, however, is no more. A haiku on Monday is enough haikuing for one week. Wednesdays will be for my plucky (semi-)new web comic, Musings. Saturdays will still be for discussing writing and instead of one post every two weeks, these posts will now be a weekly feature. Having covered basic writing elements, I’m going to start analyzing specific movies and books (heavy emphasis on the movies). But these won’t be reviews with a ratings system or anything like that. Basically, I’m going to highlight certain elements that I feel are successful, in the hopes of providing you with ideas to contemplate. I’ll give a more in-depth view of how this is going to work next Saturday.
Before I thank the academy and head to the after party (to which you’re all naturally invited), I’d like give a brief summary of the entire year. For starters, here’s a list of all the posts which had to do with writing (you can also find them in the column on the right under Shiny Shortcuts):
Stellascript will be changing its format somewhat. Haiku Monday will stay the same – nothing like starting the week with 17 syllables. Haiku Friday, however, is no more. A haiku on Monday is enough haikuing for one week. Wednesdays will be for my plucky (semi-)new web comic, Musings. Saturdays will still be for discussing writing and instead of one post every two weeks, these posts will now be a weekly feature. Having covered basic writing elements, I’m going to start analyzing specific movies and books (heavy emphasis on the movies). But these won’t be reviews with a ratings system or anything like that. Basically, I’m going to highlight certain elements that I feel are successful, in the hopes of providing you with ideas to contemplate. I’ll give a more in-depth view of how this is going to work next Saturday.
Before I thank the academy and head to the after party (to which you’re all naturally invited), I’d like give a brief summary of the entire year. For starters, here’s a list of all the posts which had to do with writing (you can also find them in the column on the right under Shiny Shortcuts):
General Guidelines; Writer and Reader; Narrators and POV, Part I; Narrators and POV, Part II; Characterization; Dialogue; Plot; Beginnings; Middles; Endings; Genre; Description; Figurative Language; Subject Matter; Originality; Style; Realism; Editing; Remakes, Sequels, and Series; Adaptation; Protagonist; Antagonist; Love Interest; Foil; Writer’s Block; Writing Exercises
I almost started listing all the different haikus, but in the nick of time I realized I’m not a total lunatic and that this was the reason I have a tag cloud with those handy little labels. It’s also in the column on the right, practically taking over the universe.
These weird and wacky Wednesdays have been fun. I’ve turned Annie Hall into a Greek tragedy (sort of), Buffy the Vampire Slayer into a romantic comedy and a sit-com, tried to imagine The Iliad as performed by Monty Python, and interviewed Princess Buttercup. But most of all I’ve been caught up in conceiving adaptations of various novels, plays, and poems for the big screen, from Browning, Byron, and Keats; to Austen, Brontë, Shelley, Wilde, Shaw, and Shakespeare, Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV; to fairy tales, including Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White. Toward the end of the year - for some unfathomable reason - I started Musings, a web comic: A Bad Idea, Metamorphosis, Adapting Rapunzel, Intangibility, Adapting Sleeping Beauty, Strategy, and Adapting Stella.
In April I joined The View from Here, an excellent online magazine devoted to reading and writing. I’ve posted alongside a talented group of people. I’ve pondered the meaning of the word writer, the highs and lows of inspiration, the dynamics of relating to an audience, making creative goals and living up to them, legacy and delusions of grandeur, adaptations and interpretations, reading lists and other side-effects, the flexibility of language, authority figures, cellphone novels, the finality of publishing, creative limits, nitpicking, showing and telling, and the challenge of writing descriptions. But there’s always a whole lot more than my posts going on at the View. Do check it out.
My apologies to those who have stumbled upon this blog searching for cliff notes and plot summaries. I hope you’re not too annoyed. I also hope you’ve never used anything I’ve written on a test or a paper. I don’t like to think that somewhere there’s a teacher or a professor wondering what bizarre version of Frankenstein or Shakespeare you got your hands on.
Before signing off on the last post of my blogging season, I’d like to thank all
(Sorry for getting so dramatic. I’ll be back again on Monday.)
2 comments:
Sound good to me, your planned changes. Hope they prove good for you.
Thanks, Dave! I hope they prove good for you too :)
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