Post Zero

Hokay, so....
I think that this is Attempt Three at a blog of sorts (five or six if you include those glorious Geocities days, when you would create a Yahoo account simply to have one of those now-hilarious then-kinda-cool low end web pages).

Attempt One was My Space, which had more writing on other people's space than actual content. Also a whole host of phail, as most My Space pages seemed to be even more lo-fi than Geocities. At least Geocities was back in the late 90s and started when the height of Web Page beauty was a frame on the side of the screen. My Space had no excuse. Though I did make an Ambigram and some Fractals via the program “Apophysis”.
Attempt Two was when I tagged on to provide some content for The Escapades of Private Cox & other Tales. Good times, and I still occasionally flick through the adventures. If you haven't read any, Sir Cox is a brilliant reviewer of the pubs in Maitland... and many other things. Heartily recommended.

Attempt Three might be better in that it will actually be occasionally updated... nay, semi-regularly updated (even if only with pics of Magnetic Man Dudes and monstrosities from under my microscope)! For I have a purpose for this one:
I intend to one day (not necessarily this year) participate in the NaNoWriMo thing (National Novel Writing Month). In order to complete it, you have to write a novel in the month of November. They are classifying a novel as 50000 words (roughly 175 pages). This translates to about 1700 words a day which, as anyone who has done uni will recognise, is roughly the amount of words you write for every single assignment after researching it the night before it is due... only, for NaNoWriMo, it is about something that you would actually give more of a damn about AND doesn't have to be quality work because the challenge specifically states that it is all about quantity and not quality. And, just think, because it is in Movember, I'll be doing it whilst sporting an artsy moustache. Consider that as quality control.
I've always wanted to be a writer but, quite frankly, I'm too lazy and unoriginal to do anything about it. I've got a whole host of ideas that would make good pieces (who doesn't?). Many, I write down in a notepad/file that I have now affectionately called “The Tome Of Unwritten Works” (it doesn't only include story ideas, but ideas for board games, game mechanics and categorising random things like the distribution of standard fantasy-type magics in to colour categories and why that is a stupid system because they are all so interrelated... stop staring at me like that). They sit there waiting to have something done with them.

What does this have to do with a blog?
As pointed out in this brilliant Cracked Article, in order to get good at writing, you have to write.
In order to write a novel, you actually have to start writing first. Crawl before you can fly. Writing out all these other ideas will be good practice.
If nothing else, this will get me to elaborate on all of those things that I have yet to write.... and that is my point.
Do I think that I am a writer masquerading as a radiographer? Hells No! For starters, I barely consider myself a radiographer. But, in more seriousness, I wouldn't expect anything I do here to amount to anything much more than self satisfaction... but I am fulfilling at least one of those childhood dreams that everyone tells me we should have, and that should be more than enough reason to do it.

I actually have to give a shout out to Lambie for this one:
I am a regular reader of his blog, From the Eyes of an Avalanche.
He does semi-regular movie/TV/Eurovision reviews on his blog. Whilst it doesn't get many comments (indeed, I think I am probably one of three people who have commented), he keeps on going. And they are pretty good reviews too. No real messing around, analysis of what works and what doesn't work, and what makes it a good/bad/mediocre piece of viewing. Because the blog has a point, the content keeps coming and my world is a better place for it.

So, if his is a spinoff of a parent blog (Seb's), I guess that makes this a spinoff of a spinoff.
Somebody who is more versed in TV/other culture could probably tell me if there has been one of those before (and if it was successful rather than a piss poor attempt to cash in on something before it... also, Transformers doesn't count).

And, y'know, this isn't too bad a start: I've banged out roughly 700 words in the space of about half an hour before starting work (later edited it longer, but still...). Maybe once I get a storyline that I could potentially pad out to a novel length, and in recent days I think I might have come up with one, I will have a good crack at it.

THE END

(here's hoping this lasts more than 6 months)