Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Time to start using this blog, or "It's just been sitting here, collecting dust."

This is, of course, my blog. Unlike the blog over at Out of the Void Productions this is a more personal one.

Who am I? Well, the name above says WC Briton, but that would be the pseudonym. If you follow Out of the Void, I'm Brit Ward. If you don't, well... I'm still Brit Ward.

The purpose of this blog is more of a personal vent more than anything else. A place to just throw my thoughts out there, whether my thoughts be relevant or not. In fact, they usually aren't. Not to most of you out there, nor should they automatically be. Maybe you end up being a fan. Maybe not. Either way, I'm not the main character of your story. You are. So it will never bother me that you are more concerned with your bills, kids' practices, or whatever else is going on in your life. You need to be more concerned with those things. I'm just an author.

But I'm still going to post these blogs.

Why the pseudonym? Well, it was a dumb joke. I tried to come up with the most pretentious name I could. In retrospect, probably should have just stuck with Brit Ward. But, I've kind of enjoyed having this moniker to work under. Somehow it lets me separate the two personalities (that of the serious, cynical author and the fun-loving, happy film-maker) and discuss things separately.

So, here we are. These will never be well ordered thoughts or essays. Just scattered ramblings or vent sessions to ease my mind. You've been warned.

That said, I'll try to never get really political and, when I do get political, I'll try to keep it reasonably balanced. That wasn't a promise. I said try. But I like all of the Out of the Void fans, liberal, conservative, or otherwise. You're all entitled to your opinions and I'm not about to preach to you. I hate preaching. And the vast majority of you, regardless of your political ideas are intelligent individuals who can hold solid, linear arguments. I'm hoping that if I offend you, you'll understand that wasn't my intent.

There's not much to talk about today. Though, I recently found hope again, especially for the future of what I'm trying to do here.

The Void Zone podcast was an accident, in many ways. Since the first day I'd ever listened to SModcast or The Instance, my two favorite podcasts, I knew that someday I wanted a podcast. Not in the same way a young man or woman knows they want to be an astronaut, or that they want to be a doctor. More of a "wouldn't it be cool" way.

It took a long time for a specific idea for a podcast to jump out at me, and it was Nick Michael, one of my Void Zone compatriots who suggested we do a podcast about movies since Out of the Void is a film group and we all like movies. It made sense and I jumped in head first.

I will also use this blog to post short stories and other writing news. I want to rewrite my first novel a little bit, so I might use this space to talk about that a little, as well. I've seen a ton of people selling short stories on Amazon and I find that I can't do it. Not even selling them for a dollar. I could sell a novella for a buck, but not short stories. So, when I do write something short, I am probably going to just publish them here for people to read for free. And I'm probably going to write short screenplay adaptations of them, which I'll also leave up here, copyright intact, but something that people can use freely as long as the attribution is there, so that beginning filmmakers can have stuff to work on and get better at the craft. I could be the Kevin MacLeod of screenwriting.

Not that it's the hardest thing in the world to write a short film. But not everyone's a writer. I don't know yet. We'll see.

So, stay tuned, you'll hear more from me in the coming months.

WC