Eneh Akpan Writes: Theme

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Finding The Best Ideas For Your Blog

The most appropriate ideas for your blog are probably, the ideas which unlock the flow and set your muse reeling to your side almost at the snap of a finger. That goes further to mean you have no business whatever wading in waters totally unfamiliar to your muse. In point of fact, if your plan is to be around the blogosphere for a very long time you need to stay on your grind by finding the niche that clicks—finding a unique voice, in other words.

Your biggest challenge while hunting ideas for your blog will be finding what works for you unless ‘you blog not to blog a subject but to blog’ (to coin a phrase). And as far as writing these breed of journals go, all you really need do is try your hands on a variety of topics (which includes searching deep within your heart) and if you can throw your back into it, there’s a 100% chance your niche will come within kissing distance.

If you intend to run a blog where you share a topic-specific content, be aware that sooner or later, you’re going to have to sit down (or stand or lay down, your choice) and consider the odds. Of course, as they say, ideas are literally everywhere and you can help yourself to as many as your heart desires. But before you do, here’s a set of really simple questions you will need to tackle if you must set off on the right foot;

“What would you like your blog to be known for?”

“Who is your audience—the readers you intend to connect with?”

Remember, we are discussing getting the best ideas for your blog. How can you get ideas that keep on giving? The ideas you come up with have to be in tune with your overall blog theme. It follows that, one of the things you must do is spread your theme so thin that it almost falls through (I mean that in a positive sense). Let’s say, for example, you blog about ‘writing.’ First of all, write down the word, ‘writing.’ Next, build a kind of wordweb around it with topics related to your subject matter. Words like ‘book reviews,’ ‘writing tips,’ ‘book excerpts,’ ‘film reviews,’ ‘writing quotes,’ ‘book updates,’ ‘author interviews,’ ‘personal essays’ (or essays in general), ‘bestseller countdowns,’ ‘author bio,’ ‘writing community information,’ ‘top 10 lists’ (these could include movies, books, television, short stories and so on), ‘book quotes,’ ‘book suggestions,’ ‘writing prompts,’ … the list goes on.

With a list like that, which by the way, you can further break down into smaller bits, you can’t run short on weird and wonderful ideas. The best ideas for your blog which also interpret as the most appropriate are the ones that feed your drive, hand you a twig to hang on to when your inner voice is drowning in a sea of life’s problems. This is the good stuff which may evolve into fresh and brilliant topics. Fetching the best materials in the long haul is setting up yourself for a unique and successful blogging.

Keep your pens bleeding.

Akpan

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Theme of Failure in Stephen King's Roadwork

Stephen King doesn’t come right out and state either in the novel or elsewhere that his book, Roadwork, addresses the theme of failure or human ineptitude in dealing with trivial faux pas before it gets blown out of proportion. He shoves it right through the transom and drops the responsibility of peeling back the loaded symbolism into the bosom of that unsuspecting culprit, Reader’s Discretion—without actually detracting from the true essence of story. Bart Dawes' son, Charlie dies from brain cancer and to deal with the emotional strain Dawes invents a split personality who he calls Fred. As Dawes tells an employee, “In those days there was no slick abortion law. When you got a girl pregnant, you married her or you ran out on her. End of options.” So it happened Bart married his girlfriend because somebody slammed the doors downstairs when they were getting it on and startled him into an orgasm.

Bart said about ending up at the industrial laundry where he worked after he got his then girlfriend pregnant; “I married her and took the first job I could get, which was here.” The father-son management (at the laundry) gave him two grand which was a huge sum back then and told him to go get a college degree, which he did. “Mary (Mary is Bart’s wife) lost the baby in the seventh month and the doctor said she’d never have another one.” Bart never really expressed regrets towards marrying his wife. As Bart notes elsewhere concerning an unrelated issue, “I wouldn’t be sticking out my neck if I thought someone was going to cut it off.”

As it’s said in Nigeria; one thing led to another. Like a dragged out chain reaction, events suggested themselves to Bart Dawes step by tragic step. First, Bart inherits the laundry as an underdog manager; his laundry shop had been incorporated into a bigger parent company. Second, his house was in the line of a government road construction project and he was compelled to move out. Third, the industrial laundry which he owed his life and career was about to face the wrecking ball as well. His wife had become a walking dead since they lost Charlie, their son to brain cancer.

Charlie was buried in his backyard and Bart couldn’t quite bring himself to go dig him back up and bury him over again. The grief would be too much of a weight to carry on his pair of shoulders.

Bart took up the job at the industrial laundry because of an accidental pregnancy, though he lost the child, eventually. He stayed on and worked at the laundry, which afforded him the house about to face the wrecking ball on account of the juvenile mistake. If his house goes down add the laundry to the equation and Dawes eventually relocates, it would seem as if somebody wiped out his entire life (something that has taken him twenty some odd years to build) and handed him a clean slate. Only, it wouldn’t be to a young Dawes with the world in his sights. It would be instead to a graying, despairing guy married to an old hag (one who is daily tortured by memories of the son she lost) with only the casket of a dead son to show for all his effort. The crushing déjà vu of his initial failure (something Stephen King calls fuckaroo) would have been too debilitating to close the eyes to like somebody putting the ballpoint of a BIC pen to your eye.

Dawes inevitably, loses his job after botching moves to purchase a new facility and then his wife Mary dumps him when she learns that contrary to Bart’s assertion, he'd done nothing in the area of getting them relocated. There it was finally out in the open and just what Dawes had been gaining at from the start without actually knowing it himself. His wife, gone, the job their youthful indulgence shoved down his throat blown out the backdoor. His only take-away prize lay in his backyard concealed within a marked grave to guarantee he stays put-the remains of his dead son, Charlie.
To Bart Dawes, it was a perfect alibi for an explosive suicide.

Keep your pen bleeding.

Akpan