Return Of The Vlog? – The Climb #192

Tuesday 1^st August 2017

I’m considering bringing back the vlogs.
This has stemmed from the conjunction of a couple of things: improving my training and watching a load of Youtube.
I’m still feeling fired up about the tournament season ahead. I’ve seen that a couple of our best fighters have signed up for the upcoming league so it’s definitely going to be more of a challenge than it was, but I’m still looking forward to it. But I need to really step things up in terms of training.
There’s lots of things I could be doing. Yeah, I already go to every training session and do some serious work in the gym a couple of times a week but do I spend as much time as others reading sources? Do I practise thrusts and cuts outside of training?
One of the things that occurred to me was the fact that I should be reviewing footage of my fights – especially where I’m stepping it up a level and run the risk of getting sloppy. I should be videoing my fights and then watching it back to spot areas of improvement or weakness.
The trouble is that even when I do film, I don’t really review, and so I need some reason to do so. I need to hold myself accountable.
I’m also addicted to gymnastics vlogs right now. I have no idea why? I guess if pushed, I’d say that I do enjoy watching the everyday lives of people who accomplish things. So I already watch a lot of business vlogs.
I guess behind this is the view that success follows the same pattern whether it be writing, the Olympics or the world of business. And sometimes watching something unrelated to writing gives enough abstraction and distance to be able to look at those patterns afresh.
Or maybe they are just quite entertaining.
Either way, I’ve been watching a bunch over the last couple of days and actually enjoy watching about their training, coupled with training montages.
And this got me thinking that the format would really suit my own training.
I really enjoyed my storm chasing vlog challenge. I felt it really pushed me and forced me to level up my filmmaking. It was also good to do something that was a pure hobby rather than something I wanted to take as far as I could.
But they were a lot of hard work and took a lot of time. One of the reasons I stopped them on returning home from chasing was because… well… it’s hard to make an interesting vlog when you are sat in a chair agonising over words.
But training swordfighting and fighting in competitions? That might be something.
I’d said to myself that if I did bring back the vlogs they wouldn’t be daily. The problem was that the writing was such that I didn’t know what made one day vlog worthy and another not. And even then, if I worked that conundrum out, I might not know that a day was special until it had finished.
Ideally I wanted something that I knew days in advance would be a special day and could plan my filming accordingly.
I did consider the swordfighting at the time but back then I just had a couple of tournaments and then that was it. Now, the rest of the year seems much more packed, and I feel I’m going to be constantly training for something.
Plus the vlogs I’ve been watching have kinda shown me a format that might work.
So I could do the odd bit of training footage, but I wouldn’t be compelled to film every session. Instead, I could just do summaries of my training and film my tournaments.
This all seemed really good… but there’s one problem. Let’s say that I do get decent…would having all my training footage on the internet for my competitors to see be wise? I mean, they could analyse my weaknesses ahead of any competition.
It’s certainly something to think about, even though there’s a large part of me that says if they can beat you just by watching a video then maybe you need to improve your technique.
I’m still not sure but with fightcamp coming up next week I may vlog that weekend as a single vlog and see how it goes.
My motivation extends further than vlogs though. I really pushed it in the gym tonight, resulting in spending the rest of the evening feeling totally knackered. But a really good knackered, I felt strong, which was good. I just wish my cardio was as good.
Despite being tired, it didn’t stop me working on the novel though. I like how all the swordfighting stuff is acting as a nice distraction to stop me getting stressed about the edits I’m making. You’d be forgiven to think I’ve forgotten about the novel, given that The Climb is so focused on swordfighting right now, but in truth, it’s acting as a fantastic diversion for my stress.
By worrying about the swordfighting (in all its various guises) it means that I’m not stressing over this chapter rewrite. By rights I should be paralysed with fear over the changes I’m making… but in all honesty, the swordfighting is distracting me enough that I chip away at it, bit by bit.
Case in point: I believe I finished the edits to the revised chapter 1. It meant cutting a load out and shifting some info further back… but I think it works and I plan to send it out to beta readers before I go to bed.
If it works (it may still need a little tweaking but I’ve revised it so much I have no idea any more whether I’m making it better or worse) then that’s one of the most difficult pieces of work done. That just leaves an edit of the last third as well as the chapter consolidation. Still a considerable amount of work but it does make the end seem closer.
I’m starting to think that when I write, my focus has to be 100% on the novel. If I’m distracted by other things it just goes all wrong. However, I think to edit, I need to be distracted. Obviously not enough to stop me doing the actual work, but enough to give me distance and stop me worrying about it.
We’ll see. I’m still very much still a beginner at editing and I have so much to learn. I just want to get these edits done and back as soon as possible. Then I can take a break and create as many vlogs as I like.
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels. Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.