Why I Started A Blog... Or How I Failed As A Writer

Now I've been getting a lot of questions lately that sound like:

"Hey Scoot, we love the blog, but why did you start one?"
...or
"Don't you write on the internet enough as it is?"
...or
"Seriously dude, 'All You Can Eat' is really more of a suggestion than a rule..."

Okay, well that last one wasn't a question, more of a really hurtful remark, but either way, I'm going to use this blog to answer, well, the first 2 questions. And by answer I generally mean cause even more questions and maybe rant nonsensically for a while. Yea, that's a word.

So I started this blog because I am a writer. I love to write. I have ever since i was just a wee little lad writing short ghost stories, or coming up with comics in my head that were usually way better than the ones I was reading. And while I ultimatly would love to write fiction in the form of novels, I currently haven't finished a single novel that I've started. And oh, how I have started some.

Here's a list of some of my novels that I started and for some reason never finished:

Lifeline (Or something like that)- The story of a teenager who's brain is evolving and the psychic connection he makes with the beautiful girl next door, while a sinister government agency tries to track him down and use him for evil... Yea, this one i finished, but it was with a to be continued so is it really finished? No...
Beautiful People - The story of a timid music professor who moonlights as an "aggresive observer" (stalker) until the night the person he follows ends up dead, and he is implicated in the murder... My computer crapped out and I lost the first 7 chapters, and jus't couldn't really get back into it
Meet God - The story of an average Joe who dies and goes to Heaven, only to realize that he is in the midst of an election to see who will become the new God, or the new Devil. This one never really got off the ground, just a quick write up and "storyboard" and then I moved on
Untitled Beatles Romance Novel - The story of a boy and a girl on a trip across the planet to popular Beatles stops, where love can't be far behind...I just really wasn't very good at writing romance
The Z List - The story of a group of survivors in a dystopian future wasteland, and how they survived amidst nuclear war, starvation, other survivors...and zombies. This one I am still currently working on, so I can't say for sure that it will go unfinished as I am making good headway on it

The point of this was I realized that while I love to write, I don't necessarily have the commitment to write a 500-1000 page masterpiece. Which is when I started writing for Bam! Kapow! Now for those of you unfamiliar with B!K! this was a site dedicated to covering news about heroes, villains, and everything in between. That meant superhero movies, comic series, funny web comics, anything and everything we could tie to a superhero.

When I first started at B!K! it was by myself, and i sent in a few opinion pieces to the editor-in-chief and then he sent me a few stories, and then I stopped writing for a couple of months. Then I came back to B!K! and started covering a lot more news stories with a lot less opinion articles. I soon became frustrated with the EIC as I would send stories and he wouldn't put them up, or he failed to notice when he sent the story to more than one writer and would generally ditch mine in favor of his friends. Whatever, it was his site so i wasn't going to argue. That led to my second hiatus from B!K! as I felt I was putting in a lot of work and not seeing anything in return. Then a few months later I noticed that a fellow writer at B!K! who had joined a month or two after me was the one and only poster on the site, taking care of every news story and opinion piece all by himself. So i wrote him asking if I could again start contributing, and he told me HELLS YES as the EIC was no longer working on the site, and had given my fellow writer editorial control for the time being. And thus began a new era of B!K! where somebody was actually in charge who cared about the site and actually tried to accomplish some things. And from that point on I never had another hiatus, as I worked very well with my fellow writer/new editor.

We carried on that way for a while, with another old writer and a slew of new writers that we brought in ourselves, and eventually my Editor (not the EIC but the fellow writer) taught me how to post and i became the Assistant Editor, which felt great for me. I got less writing done, but what I was able to do was on my terms as I had control over the entirety of not only my articles but the other writers articles as well. We worked this way for almost a year, and had really gotten a great network of writers together, when my editor let me know that he wanted to buy B!K! but was rebuked by the EIC (who hadn't done anything worthwhile on the site in months) this left both of us feeling a little let down by our EIC. Well, it wouldn't be the last time.

We continued our work on B!K!, introducing new features that were loved by readers, and moving on from our superhero inspired news site into a straight up fan site that was feeling a little boxed in by our specific criteria. So my Editor than confided in me that he was starting a site of his own, and asked if I wanted to come along as the Comics Editor (as we had more to cover than just superheroes now) to the new site. The answer was a quick yes, but unfortunately as with most things they are never ready when you want them to be, and we are still currently waiting for the site to be finished.

And then it happened about a month ago, our EIC said he was coming back full time to B!K! which we thought would be fine as long as he worked comfortably with our system and our writers. But no, as soon as he logged back in he wanted us to start running all articles through him, as well as pretty much replacing our entire "staff" with his own. He wiped my editor off the site and didn't leave much for me to do, let alone the new writers we had brought in ourselves who had no previous contact with the EIC. Now I'm not bitter or angry or anything, it was his site, and it was well within his right to take it back. But how about a thank you for all the hard work, or even an extension to our writers to continue contributing to the site, but no, nothing.

So why did I start a blog? Because I miss being heard on the internet. I won't go so far as to say I was famous or anything (but if you google SupaScoot I'm like 7 out of 10 hits) but I definitely missed the daily grind, getting the scoop or being scooped, and all the collaborations with my fellow writers. Plus I needed another outlet to keep from going insane. So here we are now, still waiting for the site to be ready, and i started SupaScoot In A Nutshell to satisfy my own sick desire to be heard by strangers through the computer. And to vent every once in a while. Now I hope I don't get in any trouble for talking about these issues that we had with B!K!, I'm not dropping any names, but it does feel good to answer a few questions there, and if I caused more questions, fell free to leave a comment! And be on the lookout for our brand new site coming hopefully as soon as effin possible.

I'm Spent...

P.S. You can check out some of my favorite B!K! articles (these are ones that I wrote) down below the posts. I wrote something like 170 for B!K! so these are just my top 10.