Over six thousand profile views and nearly eight hundred posts later, today marks the three year blogaversary for Uninflected Images Juxtaposed. If you're interested, read when it began and why HERE.
Though I suppose it really started with John August, Josh Friedman, and John Rogers. I discovered their blogs and found them to be very informative and entertaining reads...then started exploring the links on Rogers sidebar, and landed upon Denis McGrath's Dead Things On Sticks. Holy crap....someone is writing about Canadian TV! That led to finding Alex Epstein's Complications Ensue: another Canuck writing about screenwriting and the industry up here...cool! So I stalked them online for a bit, and then decided to throw my hat into the blogging ring.
I believe I averaged 6 visits a day for a month or so (though Callaghan was right there at the beginning), but then McGrath linked to my first series of Banff TV Festival updates and visits jumped to over a 100 a day. Whoa! Of course they quickly slid back down again...but then averaged around 25 visits a day. And so it grew...more and more links led to more visits and readership slowly inched upward...eventually topping out around 4-500 a day (though I still don't know quite how to measure subscribers)...that still blows me away. I guess it's not unlike surviving this business...persistence, perseverance, and just 'not going away' tends to count for a lot.
And there's never been a master plan, I've remained true to my original mission statement...juxtaposing random thoughts about TV, movies, and music with a little bit of life, and a Canadian slant thrown in for good measure. But that kind of loose blogging 'agenda' can have its shortcomings, like how you get introduced at parties.
The following year at Banff I had the pleasure of finally meeting Alex and Denis in person...and as we stood around chatting, a small group approached.
Someone: "Hey, its the bloggers!"
Someone else: "What do you mean?"
Alex: "We blog about the film and TV industry. Mine is Complications Ensue, and I blog mostly about the craft of screenwriting; Denis here has Dead Things On Sticks and he blogs mostly about the industry and business of making television; and we're not really sure what Will's niche is."
Hahaha...that pretty much sums it up.
But I still feel honoured and privileged to be somehow included in this small circle of Canadian writers...one of 'the bloggers', as it were. I believe I mentioned this before, but last year at Banff TV fest I had the strange experience of being more recognized for the Uninflected Images 'brand' as opposed to my own name. And as recently as last month in Toronto at one of the Friday night writer gatherings at the Paddock, a small group of up and comers cornered me and someone said: "You know, you're sort of famous." I am? I replied...wondering which show I'd worked on the newbie was a fan of. "For what?"
"Your blog."
Cool. But if you'd told me I'd be hearing that three years ago, I'd have laughed out loud. Who'd have ever thunk.
When you start a blog its fun and exciting and new and you have all these war stories to tell or cool and funny nuggets of info you want to share...but eventually you use those up, and then what? Not to mention, one can get tired of one's own voice...and its easy to fall into the 'who cares what I think' trap when there are so many out there doing it better and more often. But even though output has definitely slowed of late as life got busy and it's become a struggle to come up with anything interesting to say, having a place to come to post ideas or thoughts or share cool stuff with like minds is still a fulfilling endeavor.
Though I suppose it really started with John August, Josh Friedman, and John Rogers. I discovered their blogs and found them to be very informative and entertaining reads...then started exploring the links on Rogers sidebar, and landed upon Denis McGrath's Dead Things On Sticks. Holy crap....someone is writing about Canadian TV! That led to finding Alex Epstein's Complications Ensue: another Canuck writing about screenwriting and the industry up here...cool! So I stalked them online for a bit, and then decided to throw my hat into the blogging ring.
I believe I averaged 6 visits a day for a month or so (though Callaghan was right there at the beginning), but then McGrath linked to my first series of Banff TV Festival updates and visits jumped to over a 100 a day. Whoa! Of course they quickly slid back down again...but then averaged around 25 visits a day. And so it grew...more and more links led to more visits and readership slowly inched upward...eventually topping out around 4-500 a day (though I still don't know quite how to measure subscribers)...that still blows me away. I guess it's not unlike surviving this business...persistence, perseverance, and just 'not going away' tends to count for a lot.
And there's never been a master plan, I've remained true to my original mission statement...juxtaposing random thoughts about TV, movies, and music with a little bit of life, and a Canadian slant thrown in for good measure. But that kind of loose blogging 'agenda' can have its shortcomings, like how you get introduced at parties.
The following year at Banff I had the pleasure of finally meeting Alex and Denis in person...and as we stood around chatting, a small group approached.
Someone: "Hey, its the bloggers!"
Someone else: "What do you mean?"
Alex: "We blog about the film and TV industry. Mine is Complications Ensue, and I blog mostly about the craft of screenwriting; Denis here has Dead Things On Sticks and he blogs mostly about the industry and business of making television; and we're not really sure what Will's niche is."
Hahaha...that pretty much sums it up.
But I still feel honoured and privileged to be somehow included in this small circle of Canadian writers...one of 'the bloggers', as it were. I believe I mentioned this before, but last year at Banff TV fest I had the strange experience of being more recognized for the Uninflected Images 'brand' as opposed to my own name. And as recently as last month in Toronto at one of the Friday night writer gatherings at the Paddock, a small group of up and comers cornered me and someone said: "You know, you're sort of famous." I am? I replied...wondering which show I'd worked on the newbie was a fan of. "For what?"
"Your blog."
Cool. But if you'd told me I'd be hearing that three years ago, I'd have laughed out loud. Who'd have ever thunk.
When you start a blog its fun and exciting and new and you have all these war stories to tell or cool and funny nuggets of info you want to share...but eventually you use those up, and then what? Not to mention, one can get tired of one's own voice...and its easy to fall into the 'who cares what I think' trap when there are so many out there doing it better and more often. But even though output has definitely slowed of late as life got busy and it's become a struggle to come up with anything interesting to say, having a place to come to post ideas or thoughts or share cool stuff with like minds is still a fulfilling endeavor.
So thanks for still visiting and reading and commenting...that's really all one can hope for with one of these blog things. That said, I've met way more people via Uninflected than I could've possibly imagined...and even though Facebook and Twitter seems to deem blogging less and less relevant, I plan to still keep throwing stuff up here on occasion and seeing if anything sticks.
To another year.
PS When I started this little endeavor I felt I needed a hook...and decided upon ending each entry with relevant lyrics from a song. Those have fallen by the wayside as well, but in honour of today...
SONG&ARTIST? "I'm so happy for you baby
Now that you've found somebody new
I see it in your eyes, Lord it's no surprise
What he can do for you
But when I look back baby
When I look back to what we had
And I know I'm countin' good times
But there were just as many bad..."
5 comments:
"Happy Anniversary" dude. Little River Band.
But seriously...happy anniversary. Keep 'em coming and we'll keep reading.
Happy Anniversary, Dix! If anybody still doesn't know, you're the one who brought me online and I can't thank you enough for what that's helped me discover.
Jim
Happy anniversary and thanks Will. Learned a lot.
dy
Good on you for keeping the flag flying, Will. Here's to the next three!
Happy Anniv.... you definitely have more fun and met more friends this way than at pokerstars.net!
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