Thursday, February 17, 2011

The Audient in only 140 characters? Impossible!


In my little corner of the film blogosphere, I am known -- especially by people who have given up reading me -- as a very prolific writer.

If that sounds like a compliment to myself, I certainly don't intend it to be.

I like to write a lot. A lot of days, and a lot of content per day. It helps that I type fast, and that I have a reliable window of time to write every weekday.

Contrary to what may be popular opinion, I don't like to just blather on and on. I actually have very refined editing skills, the result of limiting myself to 300 words for the reviews I write. It's just that I specifically think of the blog as a place where I don't have to edit myself -- where I can blather on a little bit, as long as it is entertaining and contributes to a serious and/or humorous point.

But I can't blame you if you might like a shorter Audient.

And so it looks like I may be presenting you with a condensed version of The Audient, to accompany the regular version, for your reading pleasure. Or perhaps I should say, your tweeting pleasure.

I have so far been unwilling to concede the usefulness of Twitter, feeling like I get what I need by writing and reading Facebook status updates. (I must admit, part of my antipathy toward Twitter also has to do with its silly name.)

But today I set up a Twitter account for the first time. The reasons for setting it up had nothing to do with my blog, but my wife convinced me that I should use my blog name as my Twitter handle, which would allow me to use it in some capacity related to The Audient.

What capacity will that be? Not sure.

For awhile now, I've wished there were a way for people to leave comments on my Most Recently Seen, Most Recently Revisited and Most Recently Reviewed sections on the right. Those are just "lists" (that's the name of the blogger gadget), and they have no potential for interaction. So maybe I will use Twitter as a way to make a short, snarky and/or supportive comment on the movie I've just seen, and invite others to do the same.

Or perhaps I will tweet "Audient thoughts" that are not significant enough to warrant a whole post. Though my standards for what warrants a post are famously lenient.

Or perhaps I will tell you what club I am going to, what so-and-so said in the locker room, what it's really like on a red carpet, or what crimes and misdemeanors Lindsay Lohan and I have just committed.

We'll see. For now, you can follow me at @theaudient. Is that redundant do use two ats? Am I supposed to use a hash mark (#)? Who knows. I feel like a luddite today.

But at least we agree on this: A shorter Audient could sometimes be better.

2 comments:

Nick Prigge said...

I say, blather away to your heart's content. Not that I'm suggesting what you write is blather because it isn't. I enjoy it very much. But I don't mind long posts. I often love them. Then again I'm also capable of some fairly long posts. So who knows?

Derek Armstrong said...

Thanks Nicholas. I tend to take criticisms of my length to heart, but it's nice to know that others out there appreciate girthy posts as well. If the post is not good, it doesn't matter what its length is, right? And hopefully the reverse is also true.

Once I get through with my current busy period, I hope to return to being a more regular reader of your "fairly long" posts ...