No more posts this week — Dresden Files RPG grows large in my schedule, along with some other things — but you may content yourself with running over to Blue Collar Space to watch me harrass Brad about our friendly philosophical divide.

http://www.vsca.ca/halfjack/?p=388

Today, I bunt. I’ve got layout on my mind, in the sense that I need to get back to doing that, rather than blogging.

But it occurs to me that by this point, if you’re following this blog you know why you’re coming here.

Why is that? And what should I be writing about to keep your particular itch scratched?

So, my birthday was this past week, on Wednesday, the first day since I’ve rebooted my blogging that I’ve missed out on the Monday/Wednesday/Friday regularishly scheduled posting thing (to be followed by a Friday absence as well, but that’s almost beside the point).

It wasn’t, though, because I wanted to give myself a day or two off. It was because I was paralyzed to speak; I sat there, contemplating my soft underbelly, and thought about whether or not I was comfortable presenting it to the world. And I just wasn’t.

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Quick Blog Note

So my updates are likely to get more sporadic over the next few weeks. I started layout on the Dresden Files RPG right at the beginning of the year, and all my previously queued blog posts have been run through, so the myth of regularity I’ve been operating under is shortly to evaporate. As a writer, when I’m one, I am very, very bursty.

That said, sometimes the hardest thing is coming up with a topic. You all have an idea of the sorts of things I might cover on this blog by this point; what do you want to see me talk about? Toss me a comment and who knows, you might just get what you ask for.

Art Direction

One of the things that I do as part of my career is art direction. Not something I would have anticipated a few years back (which in retrospect seems a little silly). In doing my own publishing, I discovered I really have a drive and a feel for the work, though. I have a very visual brain, and I tend to communicate in great volume (more on that in a moment), and the two seem to work pretty well together. While I can’t personally execute on the art that I want, I can describe it pretty well, and the more that I work with a particular artist, the more I can tailor how I communicate to what they understand and deliver. (Another reason for doing repeat business with proven-quantity artists.)

A Few Examples

So Jennifer Rodgers has been blogging a little bit of an art piece she’s currently working on for the Dresden Files RPG. I’ll give you the links in a moment. But first, here’s what I sent her:

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I’m a loud guy. This is mostly true in person, but completely true online.  I talk about what I like a lot, and at volume.  This blog is a part of that, but so’s Twitter and elsewhere.  I do my best not to push my way into faces that aren’t looking to hear me run my yap, but those who do will find themselves hit with a big wall of text.

Looking at this from a completely mercenary perspective, being loud in this fashion is very much about establishing a presence and a “brand of me”.  In the Internet Age, silence is equivalent to invisibility.  You might be out there producing great things and doing interesting stuff, but if you aren’t talking about it, and if other people aren’t talking about it, it may as well not be happening. Audience is king.

But beyond the whole “I’m loud so I’m seen” thing, I’m also loud in service of the things I like and love.  I’m loud so those things are seen, too.

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Time to start blogging again!

After I discovered Twitter, my blogging in general largely fell by the wayside. Really, I think that’s something that’s good about Twitter, when it comes down to it: like a magnet, it draws away much of the content that really had no business being a blog post in the first place. But I digress.

I’ve been watching with admiration as a few of my friends — I’m thinking of Rob Donoghue in paticular — have taken up the habits of deliberate, daily posting. I’m not sure yet if that’s the thing I’m looking to do here, at least not that “aggressively”.  I can’t switch over to a new mode where my blogging becomes as much of a time-demand as the stuff I’m getting paid to do.  But all the same, given how well it’s been working for Rob, something in the same ballpark will work as an initial goal.

Part of the trick I think is that while blogging is suitable to content too big for twitter, that doesn’t mean it should rise up and demand incredibly lengthy posting.  Or as Rob quite nicely put it:

… the big lesson has been that I need to write less. Not less often, but rather, shorter material.

So that’s going to be my initial aim here at Deadly Fredly.  Short subjects, quick snapshots of thought, done as regularly as I can manage. Once I’ve done enough of these that I can get a grip on how often is reasonable (twice a week? three times? once a day Monday to Friday? the daily insanity of my good friends?), I’ll turn that particular emergent property into a policy of practice.

Baby steps, for now. Stay tuned.