Today I wanted to talk briefly about what is going on behind the scenes over here on this blog. My e-mail inbox is filling up and I have no clue how to deal with it… apart from making a post about it, I guess. Hence, I figured I’d address the shortage of reviews by explaining what I plan in terms of reviews during the upcoming month of Blaugust.
Huzzah, it’s Blaugust Season!
So, as mentioned previously, I plan on really pushing myself this time around by publishing 31 reviews in 31 days as well as some other posts. Hence, I’m currently compiling a schedule of sorts for all the reviews and I’m trying to work out when I’ll get to play these games.
A lot of them have been sitting in my mailbox for quite a while and while I’ve played some of them, I haven’t really worked on any of the drafts, hence leading to me needing to replay a lot of them.
At the same time, I’m also working on a “Blaugust Participant Appreciation Post” similar to the last one I made… mostly because the last one took a lot of time to plan and work and I don’t want to go through writing and editing that in one day.
Limit-Testing, Reviews and Improvements!
The goal is to limit-test how many reviews I can get out in one month… or a week… or two weeks… and then after August, I may be able to write more reviews again. For the last few weeks/months, I haven’t really been able to dish out as many reviews as I wanted, after all.
Also, I want to keep my paragraph length in check throughout August. My paragraphs are too long, after all.
The paragraph length will be an issue here, though, since my style in reviews is usually to write about one topic per paragraph… sometimes one topic in two paragraphs… but I don’t usually split up paragraphs as much as I’ve done lately. It takes time to get used to.
At the same time, all the reviews that I do read feature long paragraphs, too, so I don’t really have a guideline of sorts that I could follow. I can’t just get inspired by someone else. It’s a bit of a struggle to adapt to this world of “7+ lines is too much in web-writing”.
It’s a whole new world.
I also wanna experiment with headings… they make posts more accessible and I’m not quite sure how to exactly use them effectively. Maybe I’ll do that thing where I quote myself saying something in the following paragraphs and put that up as a header… but that feels a bit odd, in my opinion. Opinions on this, in particular, are more than welcome!
Time Management
More importantly, though, I wanna see if I can cut down the time it takes for me to write up a review.
Typically, I formulate my thoughts while playing a game. I don’t usually take many notes… Sometimes I do… Sometimes I don’t. It really depends on the game and whether or not I thought up a sentence that sounds “cool”.
Some reviews take about 40~60 minutes to write. Others take longer. Then I take a break and come back to it, editing the whole thing. Often, I end up rewriting whole sections and changing out sections completely depending on the tone. That’s something I mentioned briefly in my post on “reviews and bias”.
I type pretty fast, so in theory, I could cut down the time it takes for me to write something if I were to take more notes or if I were to write it immediately after playing.
Editing takes a while because I need enough time between the initial write-up and the actual editing process… but then it’s smooth-sailing, pretty much.
Branching Out… a little?
On top of that, I want to experiment with reviewing a few other mangas that I’ve been reading. Even if I read a wide variety of manga, I kinda only covered dark and gritty ones on here… maybe that’s just my niche?
Anyhow, I figured I should maybe write another two or three reviews on manga, especially with how popular my review on Girl by the Sea has become. I mean, even my latest review on RuriDragon is doing pretty well for a review.
Given that I don’t earn money from this blog, though, metrics aren’t obviously the thing that drives me or anything… It’s just that it makes me kinda happy when I see a post do well that I put effort into – which is not something I technically need to justify myself for but I figured I’d mention it.
DnD/PnP One-Shots with other Blaugustans!
Apart from that, I’m planning to do a few DnD One-Shots with people on the Blaugust discord but I have no clue what to do about the time zones and dates. I think it might be best for me to write a separate post for people to sign up for it and join the Blaugust discord & Blaugust event. I feel like that probably could work out quite well.
Conclusion
All in all, these are kinda the things I’m currently thinking about. I gotta schedule posts to have some time to write other posts… I also gotta work out the details regarding the reviews and whatnot. On top of that, exam season isn’t giving me too much space IRL either… So, it’s a bit much at the moment but if it becomes “too much”, I’ll make sure to take care of myself. Probably!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well.
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