The Music Banter Members' Journals Monthly Update Thread

[Trollheart]

Originally Posted by Pet_Sounds

You missed me!

Sorry man! I was bound to miss someone! I'll catch you on next week's one, ok?

[Pet_Sounds]

Sounds fine! Gives me more concentrated publicity, so to speak.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

What's the deal with people starting up new journals every time they get a new idea or want to ditch an existing one?

Someone who updates frequently like Trollheart I can understand why he does it otherwise stuff gets buried but I don't see why anyone else needs to.

You can't manage 2 or 3 ideas in one journal?
Nobody wants to read the same shit over and over again, put a bit of variety in them.

[Trollheart]

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

What's the deal with people starting up new journals every time they get a new idea or want to ditch an existing one?

Someone who updates frequently like Trollheart I can understand why he does it otherwise stuff gets buried but I don't see why anyone else needs to.

You can't manage 2 or 3 ideas in one journal?
Nobody wants to read the same shit over and over again, put a bit of variety in them.

Who are you talking about here Urban? I don't see, at first glance, anyone starting more than one journal for the same ideas, apart from ones that have been ditched as you say, and that's usually because the idea for it has changed.

I certainly don't want to get into a situation where everyone has ten journals, none of which are updated, but I'd rather people were making journals than not. As long as each is legitimately updated; don't want a mini-graveyard of journals here...

Maybe it's my fault for starting the idea, but as you say each journal is on a different theme and there's a proper reason for them, so I feel in order to focus attention on one particular aspect of my writing I do often need to put it in a separate journal. F'r instance, the "1001 albums" idea would not work in my current one, nor would "The Showroom"...

[Trollheart]

Guys, do you know what's ****ing hilarious and perhaps poetic justice? In my haste to get the update done before midnight, I left out one other person. He's not, to be fair, that prolific and really knows very little about journal writing, but I really should have included him or he'll moan like **** about it.



Yeah. I forgot me! How's that for not being self-absorbed? Good lord almighty!
Normally I'd just include the entries next week, but the way I update that'd take up the whole bloody post! So here for the first time is the

MUSIC BANTER MEMBERS JOURNALS WEEKLY UPDATE THREAD ADDENDUM (DUM-DE-DUM)

I also missed out Pet_sounds, who's talking about the word "Nowhere" and the different ways it can be written in http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...crap-heap.html and looking at Supertramp...

As for me, oh I've been doing the odd bit of writing, yes..

As I said at the beginning, some of us are trying to spread Christmas cheer, and down at http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...d-journal.html I'm opening more presents that are Under Trollheart's Tree, with gifts from Rexx Shredd, Machine, Frownland, Mondo Ki and Briks, while I'm also reviewing Springsteen's “Born to run” and an (ahem) unusual Christmas album... oh, and there's an announcement about a massive project I'll be undertaking in 2015. Plenty of Christmas goodies on http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...-emporium.html where we're looking at special Christmas TV episodes of shows, with this time a seasonal episode from “Frasier”, and “The Scrooge Showdown” gets underway, with so far six movies battling it out. Who will win? I have no clue, but I already know two who have made it to the next level! It may be the season of peace on Earth and goodwill to all men, but not to robots as Dredd is still fighting them in http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...d-2000-ad.html

Well, that was fun! Better remember to include my own writing next time!
Speaking of which, see you then!
Toodles again!

[Oriphiel]

Thanks for the "Workhorse of the Week" shout-out! I'm moving to a place without an internet connection soon, so I wanted to jam my journal full of content before I left. Anyway, I'm really glad you enjoyed my journal, and I'll try to update it when I can!

[Key]

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

You can't manage 2 or 3 ideas in one journal?
Nobody wants to read the same shit over and over again, put a bit of variety in them.

Not sure what you're getting at since you have 4 separate journals in the journal forum.

[Trollheart]

On foot of what Urban said earlier, and my own comments notwithstanding, I'd ask everyone who has more than one journal to perhaps consider if they need more than one. Yes I know, pot calling kettle black, but all of my journals have had a specific theme that would not have worked in my original one. If you'll indulge me a moment, I'll take you through the thought processes that led to my creation of each new journal:

The Couch Potato: When I decided to start reviewing TV programmes and movies, I knew right away this could not be undertaken in my main journal. This one would not have really any music focus, and would be quite in-depth, requiring a lot of work to be put into it. The choice was obvious, and journal number two was born.

Bitesize: After getting some negative comments about the length of my album reviews, and with more to do than I could realistically ever manage, the idea of doing shorter, more to-the-point reviews came to me, and while initially I thought of incorporating this in my main journal, I again realised that to do this properly I would need a new journal.

Classic Albums I have never heard: This idea came from the constant references I would see from people about supposed "classic" albums, which I had never heard, or in some cases heard of. It was a different enough idea to merit its own journal.

Trollheart's Psychic Album Reviews: Yes, to be fair, this is one that could have lived as a section in the Playlist, but I wanted to draw attention to it and so made another journal. Also, it's updated quite infrequently, so it doesn't really get in the way.

A Nightmare on Jazz Street: Originally I had intended to look at jazz in the feature "Stranger in a strange land", but then realised the genre is so huge that I couldn't do it justice in so short a time, so began a journal to explore jazz. Sadly, after a few entries I realised my heart was not in it, and gave it up. That journal is now dead.

Trollheart's Futureshock: Whether he believes it or not, this idea was conceived long before The Batlord opened his own comic book journal. I had in the beginning thought that it might fit in with The Couch Potato, but quickly discounted the idea and decided I needed to make this a separate journal.

The Showroom: Originally conceived as an idea in my Playlist of Life journal, it occurred to me that I would not be able to afford people the proper time and respect for their music if I did not put this in a separate journal, which is what I ended up doing.

Sure, that results in my having seven journals (soon to be eight!) but you can see that each one of them had its own reason for being, and would not have worked as well had I just subsumed them into my main journal. Also, I tend to update so much that as Urban says, new ideas I want to highlight would be lost within the general flow of my main journal. The thing about journals is that, although there are no rules and you can write about whatever you want, they tend to fall broadly into two categories: ones that concentrate on a very specific, often niche, subject, such as "Music of the Caribbean", "The rise of Punk Rock" or "A thousand things you can do with cheese", and ones that are more general, like the Playlist or Urban's Journal of Stuff, where within that loose structure anything can and does go.

If you have an idea that is so outside of what your journal is concentrating on, by all means create a new journal for it, but if you can fit what you intend to do into what you are already doing, it's better to do that. Journals can be, and often are, so varied that in one you might find Frank Sinatra sharing space with Mayhem, or Wu-Tang Clan standing next to OMD, while someone goes on about their hatred for soap commercials. You can literally do anything in your journal, and you should: the more varied it is the more it stands out and the more likely people are to read it. Niche journals are fine, and both fulfill a need and allow for expression from the author on a subject he or she may want to hold forth about, but the reality is that the only people reading them are likely to be people interested in that subject, or people just bored and looking for something to read. If you have a journal where you never know what's coming next, people will read it, because there's always the chance there will be something there for them.

So if you're thinking of starting a second/third/fourth journal, or already have, consider these points before you do:

1. Do I need to open another journal?
2. Would this work, or could I make it work, as part of my current one?
3. Will I update this, and/or my other journal(s) as frequently, or am I going to get swamped?

If you open a new journal and concentrate on it, to the detriment of your original journal, that is not a good thing to do. I always try to make sure that while I obviously concentrate mostly on my two/three main journals, I return to the other ones periodically, to make sure they're not forgotten or slip too far off the pages. If you can't do that, you really need to ask yourself if you need a second, or third journal.

If it's seen as a problem, mods might think twice about authorising the journal of someone who has one or more already, perhaps of contacting the author to explain their idea and why they think they need a new journal before they give it the green light. Or not. I don't know. Urban has a problem with it: do other mods? I can certainly see his point, and would agree that, rather than five journals apiece which are sporadically updated and end up drifting down the pages, I would prefer to see one good journal that is well maintained. What do others think?

[Trollheart]

Originally Posted by Ki

Not sure what you're getting at since you have 4 separate journals in the journal forum.

I've only seen two, and one is his "Doctor Who Thing", which would have to be separate...

[Key]

I really don't see a problem setting up more than one journal if it means being able to keep the content organized. I don't see how this is suddenly an issue.