Behind The Blog #1 – It’s Beginning.

Behind the Blog is a meme to help bloggers connect their life and interests to the content showcased on their blog. The co-hosts, Faye, Kathe, and Melissa will provide a different topic, idea, or question every week that bloggers can relate to themselves and the books, films, or other media they find interesting!

In honor of the meme’s launch, this week’s theme is beginnings. When did you start your blog? Who or what inspired or motivated you to do so? If you want to connect this to books, which book’s first line or paragraph hooked you and made sure you kept reading the whole way?

The story behind the beginning of this blog is actually long and windy and probably more complicated in words than it actually was in real life. But it is something that has changed me so completely that talking about it is definitely something that I am willing to do.

In all honesty, despite how I started out my blog, the reason I stuck at it is probably a more interesting story but that is not what we’re discussing here, even if it does play a little relevance. In fact, let’s start with that. Other the years, since I discovered the glorious World Wide Web, I have tried to “run” a fair few blogs. I had a WordPress blog when I was fourteen that became more of an online diary; it lasted maybe four posts. Then I found livejournal and I was all over it. That lasted a few more posts than the first but quickly dwindled down to nothing as well. I didn’t blog for a long while after that and then I found Tumblr. And that is one blog that just lasted. I still have it today, although i use it a lot less now. But that, to me, wasn’t really a blog so much as me just… re-posting images and that was why it came so easy to me. Therefore, when I started this blog, it took a lot of deliberation before I got around to doing it with my major fear; would I make it last?

So, starting my first year of University, I decided that what our uni really needed was a film magazine. We had a uni newspaper but I felt that with a film and television studies degree, there needed to be something catering to us (and lets face it, most other students on campus). I tried hard to set up a society for it, went through all the battles, got plenty of people interested but, at the end of the day, the union never liked the idea so it went nowhere. In the meantime, with writers enthusiastic for writing about film, we tried to make an e-mag between for us and other students anyway – who needs funding?!? – but, when it was realised how much extra work it was (i did the graphics for each article and it took forever!), it soon dwindled into nothing more than a pipe dream and just never took off.

Deflated, I stopped writing reviews of films, I focused on my uni work and my uni work only. Then, towards the end of my second year we were really getting it hammered into us that we needed work experience, we needed something to help us along the way. That got me thinking about my failed magazine and then I wondered if maybe, just maybe I could try and do something similiar on my own. That’s when I thought that I could maybe start a blog. I scoured the internet looking for other film blogs, read them religiously, enjoyed reading them and always felt tempted to just ask to join them until I found one blog who gave advice to new film reviewers and stated that having your own blog is a great way to work for others’. I deliberated some more for a few more months on the subject, ask my friend Brodie about her own blog, and she helped encourage me to just get on with it and make one. But the question was; what do I publish?

Eventually it came to me, my blog would focus on Adaptations. Of course, that is not where this blog is at anymore but that is how it started, that is where it was headed. I’m glad of where I am with this blog now. Glad of how I got here and who I’ve met on the way and I really feel that everything that led up to my blog has really had a huge impact on me now. One of the things I’m so used to saying now is that everything happens for a reason. By that I mean, while it may not seem to make sense at the time, there’s a reason things aren’t going to plan. You may have missed that train because on the next you’ll have more quiet, or you may not get the blogs you start off the ground because it’s giving you the experience to learn more about what you want to blog about first so that one blog you make can stick around for a while.

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And, because I do want to relate all of this back to books, some of the books I love that have amazing beginnings are;

Lucas by Kevin Brooks: My ultimate favourite book ever, the starting letter is so inspiring and really pulls you in, begging you to read more.

Harry Potter and the Philosphers Stone by J.K.Rowling: Who knew that first paragraph would change the rest of my life?

Black Heart Blue by Louisa Reid: Extremely powerful first sentence that just draws you straight into the story.

Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman: This woman can write, and the beginning of this book definitely proves it!

what about you? what are your favourite beginnings?

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And, relating to films, credit sequences that I love;

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World: I just loved it! So unique and cool!

Juno: It was really interesting and different! No just boring old credits in this film!

The Losers: What a way to introduce us to all the awesome characters in this one!

I am sure there are many, many more I am forgetting but it’s time for me to stop now. Maybe I’ll add some more later when I think of them!

what about you? what are your favourite credit sequences?

Behind the Blog is a new meme for bloggers themselves. To find out more, check out the introduction on my blog or that on Faye’s.

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