Friday, October 05, 2012

The Utterly Fantabulous Seventh Anniversary Hoe-Down!

Seven years ago today yesterday, Antick Musings shambled into existence, a training blog to get me in shape to write the official SFBC blog, which I then expected to start very soon thereafter. That official blog didn't start up as quickly as expected, and ended abruptly -- among other things that ended abruptly at exactly the same time -- but Antick Musings soldiers on, if much changed and altered over the years.

For the first few years, especially when I was working for the SFBC and, later, had hopes of getting back into the SFF field, I insisted that Antick Musings wasn't a book-review blog, and didn't post anything critical of any of the SFF books I read. (Of course, as we've seen, even things I think are positive are sometimes taken otherwise by some writers -- writers are of necessity thin-skinned, so I should have anticipated that.) Once it was clear that I was out, and not getting back in, Antick Musings slid in the other direction -- particularly during and after the year-long stint of Book-A-Day in 2010-2011 -- and became almost entirely a book-review blog.

None of that is what I intended or expected, but a blog -- like life -- is what actually happens day-to-day, not what anyone plans or controls. And so I don't want to say what Antick Musings will become, since I simply don't know: it becomes whatever it becomes because of what I think and write, and because of what happens to me in the meantime.

Before I go any further in my navel-gazing, let me give you the inevitable links back to prior anniversary posts: one, two, three, four, six. (Yes, I missed the only milestone anniversary this blog has had so far, which very well illustrates the way I operate: lots of thought and energy and activity, inevitably directed in an unproductive way.)

Post quantity dropped precipitously during Book-A-Day, and hasn't recovered since -- partially because I launched another blog, Editorial Explanations, immediately after Book-A-Day ended, and partially because I seem to have stopped writing lots of short posts the way I used to. I could also try to blame that drop in post count here on my increased Twitter presence -- except I post only sporadically there -- or the Hornswogglets Tumblr, except that's practically a ghost town, with just a few stray posts and lots of roaming tumbleweeds. Whatever the reasons, here are the numbers:
  • 2011-2012 -- 332 posts
  • 2010-2011 -- 445 posts
  • 2009-2010 -- 711 posts
  • 2008-2009 -- 880 posts
  • 2007-2008 -- 834 posts
  • 2006-2007 -- 841 posts
  • 2005-2006 -- 809 posts
Since Antick Musings has turned into primarily a book-review blog, I should link to some of the ones I thought were most successful. This year, though, I'm going to do it with quotes, allowing me to quote myself, which is nearly as disreputable, and precisely as pleasant, as it sounds:
My love-hate relationship with the status of Antick Musings as a book review blog was the undertone of much of what I wrote this year. (Yes, I do realize it -- it is that obvious.) Probably the most -- possibly only -- interesting bit of that was What a Pile of Books Demanding to Be Reviewed Looks Like.

I used to write about movies here -- hell, I used to see movies regularly, but I've been too busy or anxious or whatever to do more than one a month for a good year now -- but the only real remnant of that this past year is a lone Movie Log post called Catching Up Once Again.

At the end of 2011, as is now traditional, I picked the best books I'd read each month that year, as a pseudo-Top Ten of the year. It's a weird format, but I like weird formats.

Speaking of particular days of the year, I also continued my tradition of rounding up the very particular news announced on the first day of April.

I blogged about music intermittently, talking up songs by The Airborne Toxic Event, Local H, Fountains of Wayne, Mieka Pauley, Cloud Cult, Sleigh Bells, and The Indelicates.

I caved into peer pressure more than once, with such memes as Less Exciting Book Titles and The Weird Questionnaire. I also -- clearly misunderstanding how memes work, and why people do them -- tried to start my own, with the too complicated and smells-like-work Five Quotes.

In the aftermath of last year's flood, I wrote something closer to a real essay than I usually manage: What We Lose, What We Save. I'm still reasonably proud of it.

Every Monday, I had a Reviewing the Mail post to examine -- and, often, to supposedly-humorously interrogate -- the books that had arrived in the prior week's mail.

If you're concerned about your personal brand, I have some words for you. Many of them are unprintable.

I blogged about the various tempests-in-teapots of publishing much less this past year -- perhaps because they all start to look the same, after a while -- but I did write about What Publishers Don't Do, Street Dates and Sales Velocity, Amazon Drops a Big Shoe, Barry Eisler Continues to Shill for Amazon, Stating the Obvious,

I review comics, though I don't do much of the chin-scratching (or hair-tearing, or forked-tonguing) kind of blogging about comics that defines the form on the Internet. This year, my major think-piece in that area was The Myth of the Comics Creator,

Have I mentioned that I hate consultants? Let me point you towards In Which a Lying Liar Lies.

As my sons have grown up, I've spent much less time blogging about the cute little things they do -- partially because tweens don't do cute little things -- but I did actually put up a picture to go along with my thoughts about My Alarmingly Large and Increasingly Grown-Up Son

And those are the kinds of things I blogged about this past year -- plus lots and lots more posts listing books, whining about the books that were destroyed, and reviewing books I had semi-recently read. It's a rut, I admit it. And maybe admitting it will let me find a new rut to trample down for a while.

I hope you'll stick around for Year Eight.

No comments:

Post a Comment