Having reached the one year point, I’ve decided to spend this week reflecting on what I’ve learned from blogging over the past 12 months, firmly keeping in mind I still have a lot to learn.
Passion
The third thing I have learned from blogging over the last 12 months is that regardless of the quality of someone’s writing, what I find most interesting is reading the posts of someone who is passionate about the topic. That doesn’t mean they are raving fanatic unwilling to listen to other view points, but that they really and sincerely want to talk about an anime or something and that desire to share their thoughts and ideas just shines through.
There’s all different ways to write about and to review anime. You can take a heavy analytical approach, an entirely how you felt or reacted approach, listing positives and negatives, comparisons to other anime, giving a score out of ten or whatever, and so on and so forth. None of these have more merit than any other as far as I can tell because I’ll read one post on one site and another that uses the same approach on another but enjoy one more than the other because of the writer’s voice. When reading if it feels like I’m actually hearing that person and understanding how they felt about something or how they saw it, then I enjoy reading it more and want to take part in that conversation.
And that’s something I want to continue working on with 100 Word Anime. I started the blog to engage in conversations about anime and I am loving that aspect of blogging. I want my passion for the topic to come across when I write but I also want to add something meaningful to the conversation rather than just being more noise in cyberspace. To be honest, I don’t think I’m where I want to be with that yet. Some posts I feel are getting close to where I want them but others are too reactionary or I swing too far the other way an I feel my voice gets lost because I’ve tried to be more analytical. That said, having gone back through some of my earlier posts (for my feature on Friday where I look at how the blog started out), I am definitely happy with the progress I have made in writing this year.
This one was a shorter post than the previous lessons learned, but while it is short, I think this is one of the most important things I’ve been thinking about in regards to improving my blog overall (without adding to the content at this point).
What are your thoughts on this? How do you get your voice across?
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Thanks,
Karandi James.
I think most of the time your sincere thoughts and passion shines through in your posts. But it is something a lot of folk struggle with, myself included. Keep up the great work.
What a great thought, Karandi. It’s true that blogging isn’t just about writing your views on particular topic with deep analytical process. It is also important to convey other bloggers’ thoughts and feelings to certain things they are passionate of. It’s like you also feel what they feel. It isn’t about the words, but their feelings in a literal way, and that is the most interesting aspect of the conversation. Their soft voice can be simplified into the highest extent of emotion. As for me, I don’t really think I’m good in writing, technically speaking. What is only important for me is that, my words are enough to express how passionate I am to the things I love the most. 🙂
You’re one of the best bloggers I’ve encountered so far, to be honest. Keep it up. 🙂
Thanks for the kind words.
love these posts, love geting an insight.
Glad you are enjoying them.
I think your passion comes across in both your posts and comments. It’s not always to the same extent and some show it more than others but there’s absolutely no doubting how much you love this medium.
I struggle with it though. I’m sure my earlier reviews were all unspeakably dry and even the current ones have that issue, though I’m trying to change it. But some of the non-review posts seem to convey my voice better.
I don’t know, your thoughts about Diabolik Lovers are pretty clear (and hilarious).
I think in my earlier posts I was always trying to think about how people would take the way I worded things and I ended up with some posts that were very stilted and just not quite right. Even now, I know that at times it isn’t that I change my opinion but I do think about how I’m expressing that and how other people will take it and the end result is sometimes a little unnatural. I’m going to keep working on that one.
I don’t really think you have to worry about your passion not showing through in your reviews, because it really does. Whether it is something you like, or dislike, your opinion on it always comes across, and that is really cool.
I agree when writing a review I always try to be passionate about it as well. I think it makes for a more entertaining read, and hopefully it also convinces other people who have not yet seen it, to try it out. But that does not mean that when other people dislike something I am not open to a discussion for it. That really is one of the things I like about blogging, exchanging thoughts with other people, and having a fun discussion about it. Great post! 😊
Thanks – and I really feel when reading your posts that your enthusiasm for anime (movies, etc) really comes through even if you weren’t so keen on what you were watching. It’s always fun finding out how you liked (or didn’t like) something.
I’m never sure if my voice comes across in my posts, but I definitely lean more towards the reactionary how you’re feeling at the moment sort of writing style. Even when I do more analytical posts I find it’s best for me to just write how I feel and only edit for typos. Like I said, not sure if it works and my voice comes across, but it’s the most comfortable way for me to blog. The con with doing that is thinking of topics I can do that with, but that’s a work in progress haha.
Loving these tips, great advice in them 🙂
Reactionary posts are always kind of fun to read because it feels a bit like you watched something with the person and now you are chatting about it afterwards. That said, they miss some of the detilas and insights that come out in more analytical posts. It is interesting seeing the different ways people go about writing about the same topic.
Karandi, you obviously have passion for anime and blogging about it. We’ve seen that from just your two posts so far on what you’ve learned. What I think doesn’t come across all the time is seeing that passion reflected in your writing.
That said, I think you identified a few opportunities yourself to improve on this. You put out A LOT of material, so I can understand the varying levels of personal investment in a topic, but given how many you’ve written I don’t always get the feeling that I’ve gotten much of your personal insight. For something you really liked though, like your Snow White with the Red Hair review, that shines through.
As a personal example of what you’ve talked about in this post, I noticed that I got more reviews this past month than ever. Maybe that’s the natural trend of my blog’s growth, or maybe it’s because I spent the month writing about something I’m passionate about.
got more views* not reviews 🙂
Possibly a bit of both, your blog is awesome, but your posts on Your Lie In April have been an absolute joy to read. Thanks for the feedback.
That’s such a good point. It’s definitely more enjoyable to read posts where the authors interest in their chosen topic really comes through.
It’s something I feel I need to work on as well because it’s so easy to slip and sound too narrative or analytical that your voice gets lost.
Thanks for sharing these posts! They’ve got some really useful tips! 😊
Glad you are finding them useful.