The Modern Romantic

Hey folks!

Before I begin- the main news: I've started a phonecast podcast. Click below to listen or subscribe on iTunes with this link: http://slapcast.com/rss/japhy1979/index.xml

Now, on to other things:

It's been a long time since I bothered to write a proper post. Partly, this is due to the busy-ness of normal life, but mainly it's the result of doing some introspection and frankly, being a bit dissatisfied with where I'm at. Or maybe, it'd be better to say I've been evaluating where I'm at; as a person, as a writer.

While I talk a lot about creative writing, about storytelling, it seems most of what I do (both here and for the magazine) is short, blurby, political stuff. The kind of stuff Towleroad does better. Maybe it comes from reading too much Gawker or something. Now, for the mag, this makes sense. Frontiers is a great publication, but it's not the New Yorker; readers want stuff that's short and too the point (and um-- with sass), but when it comes to my own work, blogging about my anger at politics or celebrity culture has become kind of boring. Like I said, others do that better-- and it's been done.

I'd like to focus more on the things I enjoy and less on keeping up with the blogosphere's Jones'. I'm still deeply concerned about how to be a good citizen, what it means to live in an age of celebrity, canyons and all the other good stuff I go on about, but I want to talk about these things in a different way. Being didactic is great for impressing people with your ego, but it seems to me it is more self-serving than story-serving or (using this phrase with extreme trepidation) "message serving". A lot of blogs are just that- ego shrines. I self-conciously put a lot of that into this blog-- the photo, my name everywhere. The initial impulse of the site was to really define "brand Japhy", but after a year of doing that, I'm kind of bored of the endeavor and fearful that it's probably doing something awful to my soul.

To that end, I'm going to be retooling the site. It's no longer going to be a "traditional blog". One of the big things I want to try is to have "dispatches from my life". I've figured out how to get camera photos on to Buzznet (see the sidebar) and with the phonecast, I could be this roaming observer poet, publishing in real time. I think it'll force me to be more personal, plus, I think it'll be endless fun.

I think the site is going to wind up more eclectic. My metaphor here is that it's my refrigerator door in cyberspace- and rather than worrying about packaging everything for an audience (as I do with my professional writing), I'm going to aim to make this site more free form an experimental.

This actually goes back to why I started blogging in the first place. It was initially an excercise to get me to be a better writer-- to write more often and craft the short, pithy pieces that magazines wanted. Also, it helped develop my "journalist voice". I like that voice and am proud of it, but what I need to develop now is to craft my "storyteller voice" and that's what The Modern Romantic is going to be all about.

Loyal Reader, thanks for sticking with me.

-Japhy