State of the Blogs Report

Since it’s what I do best, time to do a little navelgazing. About my blogs, this time. Since I’m pretty happy with both my blogs right now, I think it’s a good time to talk about them. (Much less whining and cursing that way.)

Although Aliens in This World is not one of the great blogs of its time, it does an adequate job of providing space for my rants and amusement for my readers. The sad truth is that I am not a profound thinker or writer (except about subjects too depressing to inflict on others). I suspect this is because I have to spend so much time wrenching my thoughts away from their natural bent towards depressing subjects (ie, the sorrows of the world and how they are somehow all my fault).

I have been remiss this year in providing songs and translations for my readers’ amusement and edification, and somehow, I have never really made this a story blog. I suspect that singing in choir and reading audiobooks for the podcast is using up what creative energies I have. But since I haven’t been doing much creative work for the last three years or so, I’m glad to have any outlet for creativity. (Pace the artistic ideals of the Romantics, I have to be happy to be creative. If I’m unhappy, I just think of creative ways to beat myself up.) But I will try to do more creative work in the next year or so, even if it’s just more translations of news articles. Original content is a good thing, for a website or a blog, and so is less time spent surfing the net.

Maria Lectrix has recently had a good-sized spike in listeners, which bids fair to be a permanent one. This makes me happy, for although I trust the long tail, I am also in favor of short term gratification (and feedback). However, it also makes me more concerned about keeping listeners interested.

The problem is that, while I’m sure that recording the works of R.S. Surtees and St. John of the Cross is something for which civilization will someday thank me, at present almost nobody is downloading them. (And since Steven Riddle is in Florida, St. John of the Cross is gonna be feeling mighty lonely this week….) So that’s two days of the week which are, for most listeners, a waste. Beyond that, I know that Irenaeus is going to take a good long while, and I want to provide some shorter Fatherly works so that new folks can jump in. But early Christian hymns don’t seem to be the killer app.

I would like to add something (at least as bonus books) which would be of more interest to my listeners, but what? I certainly have my ideas on that, but it would be useless to replace one quirky choice unappealing to others with yet another quirky choice. I begin to sympathize with television programmers.

And how am I to manage bonus podcasts? Honestly, my time is pretty booked. Also, I keep having trouble with this stupid weakness and tiredness afflicting me. Sometimes — particularly on Fridays — I almost fall asleep while I’m reading. (Sleepiness, not boredom.) I know this isn’t due to the podcast, because I had plenty of troubles with it before podcasting. But it’s part of the logistics I have to keep in mind.
I’ve also concluded that my early decision to keep my project separate from Librivox was not entirely foolish. Maria Lectrix is never going to be the big force that Librivox is, but Librivox is never going to let me make parts of incomplete stories available every day. Also, Maria Lectrix can do all sorts of non-Gutenberg public domain books which Librivox is hardpressed to do, though Librivox has the manpower to do things which Maria Lectrix can’t (like full-cast recordings). Finally, there’s no denying that my occasional replacement of period with modern language, though done cautiously and only for comprehensibility’s sake, is against Librivox’s ideals. Each project has its own way of doing things, so separation is best.

I do feel that Maria Lectrix has turned out to be useful and interesting, to my listeners as well as myself. You can’t ask for more than that. But in the coming year, I hope to make it better. I plan to do more poetry, and more diverse content. (I love dark stories in the cold months, but I’m pretty sure that not everybody does.) I also want to set up some kind of forum, as I really would like to get some book discussions going. If there’s anything you’d like to see that I’m not doing, let me know.

Maria Lectrix will celebrate its first bloggiversary on September 20, while Aliens in This World will turn four on August 30.