April! Time spent bloggin’

April 1, 2006 on 11:59 pm | In Anime Scene, Site News | 17 Comments

You know my daddy blogged anime for his whole life
And he never knew nothing more
Yeah and his daddy done the blog like his old man
Who had blogged before the war
And though she couldn’t have known till I was born
My poor mama God rest her soul
Like them I come out bloggin’
-“Bloggin'”, Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven’s Door

I presently have no idea where my laptop is, but it contains four updates. I’ll put them up when my precious cargo has been safely returned to me.

It’s April 1st in some parts of the world, and it looks like the anime community has been swept up in a storm of “I’m quitting!” messages. The one written on Equivocal Resolution mentions that each entry takes about two hours to write.

Now I’m not sure how to take that, it might be a blatant lie. But it did make me wonder how long people spend writing their entries. Mentar once said that it takes him about four hours to write up an episode.

In comparison, I’m kind of ashamed to admit the amount of time I spend on my site nowadays. There have been some entries (such as Sugar) that have taken me literally months to write – and I’ve never been satisfied with those – but almost all of the entries I have made in March have taken me between ten and thirty minutes to write and I don’t think the quality has suffered as a result: if I say what I intended to say, then my mission has been successful. (this figure does not include image preparation, which used to take me so long that I would just swear at my computer for hours at a time)

I think that when the words come easily, there’s no fear. I’ve been working on a Rozen Maiden article since December that I will amost certainly add a few words to and just kick onto the site so that I can finally let it go and allow myself to watch Traümend.

So, to all anime bloggers: how long do you spend on an entry? Do you release things you’re not satisfied with onto an unsuspecting public? My scheme might change now that I’m on top of things, but it’s always interesting to see what the “other side” is thinking.

17 Comments

  1. 1-2 hours is usually what i use to write posts. When i started using mpc for screenshots i have saved something like 15-30 min per each post and hopefully that improved quality of text.

    Comment by Anga — April 2, 2006 #

  2. Depends. I love figure news cos I need about 5-10 minutes for each one. But the long articles with tonnes of pics take about 4-5 hours.

    Comment by tj han — April 2, 2006 #

  3. I probably spend about 35-40 minutes on each post. This includes writing up the entry, taking screenshots, editing and resizing them and uploading and fixating everything after I’ve watched the episode in question.

    It frightens me how many bloggers out there actually watch an anime episode with Notepad open beside it and write about it as they watch. I’m surprised it doesn’t absolutely kill the experience for them. I know it would for me. My memory is good enough to write about an episode after I’ve actually watched it in one go. But, whatever floats their boats, I guess.

    You don’t do that, do you Alex?

    Comment by KT Kore — April 2, 2006 #

  4. I usually take about an hour and a half. Maybe a little less, if I’m blogging an easy subject (like Binchoutan). And I usually blog with small breaks to make notes about what I want to discuss in my post, because I’m forgetful. ^^; The writing part is definitely the hardest and most time-consuming to me — the images are barely any work. And I definitely don’t release posts I’m not happy with to the public. I have a couple times, but I was never happy with that decision.

    Comment by Ariadne — April 2, 2006 #

  5. I have a physical notebook to my side that I use more for my own amusement than for actual writing. If you look at the later episodes of RahXephon I have notes along the lines of “wtf”.

    I write down quotes I really like as well and I cap as I go – it’s so easy that I don’t worry about that.

    Comment by Alex — April 2, 2006 #

  6. I spend a little over an hour on average but I’m pretty new to anime blogging so I’m still finding my method. I watch the episode with notepad open taking notes, then use that to make the write up. I used to write as the episode progressed but that got annoying for shows that hop around to so many different things throughout the episode. Screenshot prepping takes me about three minutes. o_O

    The longest episode to do a writeup for me was a Shinigami’s Ballad one. Took three days because I kept thinking “I don’t want to get depressed again enough to do that one!”

    Comment by Elfir — April 2, 2006 #

  7. I try to limit myself with an hour. If it doesn’t work in that allotted time, oh, well. Also, there are series easier to blog than others. Black Cat takes me half the time I do a Noein commentary. I think ths has to do with the tone of the entries. I write more comfortably if I’m being playful or silly in a post.

    Comment by Ten — April 2, 2006 #

  8. Back when I was doing Blood+ limericks as my way of anime blogging, it would take about 10 minutes once I had screenshots, which I would take while watching the episode.

    Now I spend about… hmm. 30 minutes? The longest part is dealing with screenshots, the brilliant commentary is second nature to me.

    Comment by lolikitsune — April 2, 2006 #

  9. LOL Mine was a lie…I’m sorry! It used to take 2 hours to put up a single entry on Mai Otome and Blood+ thanks to my abysmal screencapin’ senses. Haha I used to watch the ep on WMP first because I didn’t want to change and than take screencaps with BSPlayer. Yea that took about 40 mins! O_O” Yet now, on average…it should be between 30-60 mins.

    Comment by Problematic — April 2, 2006 #

  10. While there are little things that can save you time, like learning how to do batch transformations in Photoshop, the amount of time it takes for a recap really depends on the length of the episode, the amount of depth that you go into, and how you are doing your screencaps. Ones like My-Otome 25/26, GSD 47, and Evangelion 12 both took me hours upon hours to do, while random Yakitate!! Japan or Pretty Cure ones take like 15-30 minutes. Editorials can take any amount of time, again depending on the length and whether or not I’m going to take the time to look up citations rather than just saying like “Someone, I think Foucault, said that…”

    It frightens me how many bloggers out there actually watch an anime episode with Notepad open beside it and write about it as they watch. I’m surprised it doesn’t absolutely kill the experience for them. I know it would for me. My memory is good enough to write about an episode after I’ve actually watched it in one go.

    I do this, but I’m used to it since I have to take notes during the movies that I watch in all my film classes. Rather than writing things down that are related to the plot (“Sergay takes away Nina’s powers”), I use it to write down things that I might forget later, like a line of dialogue, a note on the subtext, that sort of thing. My My-Hime DVD review is basically what the notes that I take during an episode look like.

    I’ve also found no correlation between the amount of time that it takes to write an article and the number of page views that it gets.

    Comment by jpmeyer — April 2, 2006 #

  11. […] Over at Anime Pilgrimage, Alexander ponders time spent anime blogging, and seeing as I’ve been at this longer than most, I thought I’d share my experience. Back in the Nowhere days, I’d average a half hour per post – including screenshot selection, goofy caption writing, and actual post writing. Typically, I’d have already composed the actual post in my head by the time I finished watching an episode, meaning that most of that half hour was devoted to screenshot selection and caption writing. The captions didn’t always come easy. Sometimes, they wouldn’t come at all. […]

    Pingback by A Time to Blog at Hop Step Jump! — April 2, 2006 #

  12. They usually take about thirty minutes to an hour for me, including taking screen shots.

    Comment by TL-chan — April 2, 2006 #

  13. I’m very critical of my own writing, so I usually spend up to two or three hours just revising my post. That’s followed by choosing/editing my screenshots and providing captions for them. After I’m done with all of that, I edit even more on WordPress until I’m fully satisfied with the post. All in all, it can take up to 4-6 hours without any interruptions. So, you can say that blogging takes up most of my free time, but I enjoy the whole process of it, so I think it’s worth it. 🙂

    Comment by kawaii — April 2, 2006 #

  14. 4-6 hours huh? That’s hardcore. Now it’s all coming together. 😛

    Comment by KT Kore — April 2, 2006 #

  15. Kind of freaky to think that such time could be spent watching a 13 episode series to completion (insert o_O here).

    Comment by Alex — April 2, 2006 #

  16. Since what I write is reviews of whole series, rather than reviews of individual episodes, it’s not necessarily comparable. A typical review takes me 2-3 hours to write, but usually it has to stew for a couple of days or even up to a week before it’s ready to pour out through my fingers.

    Comment by Steven Den Beste — April 4, 2006 #

  17. I’ve realised that review structure is entirely arbitrary just in the last week, so I’ve returned to my “random lumpings of episodes” for DVD reviews because it suits me so much better and offers the chance of both an introductory post and subsequent coverage of developments without worrying too much about spoilers.

    Comment by Alex — April 4, 2006 #

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