Yesterday I officially launched another writing project, another music blog - of sorts, since it is an email newsletter and it's updated way less frequently that the old one.
I suppose anyone who's read the launch post of Nicksy Once Monthly would have a really good idea of why I decided to do it after years of dithering. But that's not the point, really. Instead, you're in luck, for I'm treating you to another one of those ultimately empty entries about the magic of writing. Cue SpongeBob's "imagination!" GIF.
One of the things I end up embracing when starting a writing project is tweaking how you write to suit the medium you're writing on. I remember when I did Shale Campaigns (now that's a throwback) and someone being surprised to learn that I was the one behind it. Apparently, I wrote so differently there, compared to this blog, that they didn't even realize it was me, despite my name being all over it.
It's funny, because I don't think I have found my writing voice yet. That, or I haven't really coalesced into a style and stuck with it. I know that recently I have been calling back to phrases in my essays on here, but it's more of an in-joke to me than anything. In other words, I really am a crap writer. But I digress.
To be fair, I write a personal blog, I write a newspaper column as part of my day job, and I have yet another project. Different audience (if any), different demands. With the Once Monthly, it's an email newsletter, so I recognize that you will have to make it really worth your subscribers' time. (I have an idea how many people actually read the emails; that level of analytics scares me.) At the same time, I have to embrace the fact that, unlike in the old music blog, I am not attempting to come from a position of authority. The fact that I put (a variation of) my nickname on the title means it's all from my perspective, my narratives, my knowledge, or lack thereof.
So, I've had to double down on the pronouns I use. A lot of first-person stuff. None of the royal we's. And that includes the social media posts. Now, it should be easy, because at some point on the old music blog I really embraced the "I", despite it being nominally a team effort. But I could easily switch to "we" if I'm referring to something the blog does, as opposed to something I think.
Now, I realize it's a bit harder. I'm not acting like a magazine. I'm just acting like a personal journal. ("Confessional as music journalism" is a phrase I've been playing with the past couple of days.) I'm extra conscious about making it all about me on there. Funny, because I'm doing it right now - how many I's did I use in this paragraph alone? - but, of course, this is the personal blog. You know what I mean, right?
I guess it wouldn't be a struggle if I just referred to myself in a lot of conversations. For the longest time, it's always been a "we", for some reason. An in-law caught me slipping over Christmas, and I quickly switched back to the singular first-person. This remains a learning curve.
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