Reading not Writing

OK, so I fell for that whole "start a blog with good intentions and then don't post for ages" thing that seems to happen to so many people. Since my initial post on 4 September, I've seen live work by:

(The legendary) Foreign Muck
Yara El-Sherbini
Stacy Makishi
Marcia Farquhar
Richard Dedomenici
Bobby Baker
Curious
Roza Ilgen
Qasim Riza Shaheen
Jiva Parthipan
Tim Brennan
Alex Bradley & Hetain Patel
Steve Robins and Shi-Ker
Duncan Speakman
Harminder Singh Judge
and 5 artists at the You and Your Work platform...
...plus a couple of gigs and one of WORST films I've ever seen at the cinema.

Most of this stuff was well worth seeing and some of it was pretty extraordinary, but I think I'd even bore myself about the extraordinary pieces if I tried to cover all that ground now. I hate reviews that sounds bored about their subject so I'm determined not to succumb. Ah well, at least I got as far as writing the list.

What I have been doing is a lot more reading on the internet, as opposed to writing on the internet. I love the internet. I also love trivia. And opinion. Which is probably why I love the internet. It's only over the last few months that I've really started to enjoy reading blogs. It took me a while to get to grips with a) what constituted an interesting blog, and b) how to find other interesting blogs. Of course, it's just like anything else - get recommendations, search for writing on a subject you're interested in, follow your instinct, suck it and see etc.

What I've learned recently, and why I'm now suddenly really into blogs, is how conversational the whole experience can be. It's all about the digressions in the hyperlinks. I managed to go from screenwriting to an article by Neil Gaiman on Fairy Stories, to Hebden Bridge, back to screenwriting, how important it is to hear harsh criticism and how pro-active you need to be if your aiming for success at all as an artist. (These are some of the links but not the complete route)

Some of it was useful professionally, some of it was fascinating generally, all of it could arguably be called a waste of time. All of it was interesting in some way or other.

In summary, me needs to sort me links.

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