Assignments I wish I had written

"A story should have a beginning, middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order." - Jean-Luc Godard

You must forgive me, for I am being a bit vague on purpose. It is the old hook, line, sinker content strategy. The hope is to get you to be interested in this ramble, build up expectations for what is going to come in the coming weeks, and get you to sign up.

When I was at MICA, where I did an MBA in marketing, every now and then there would be these assignments wherein you had to write 1000 to 1500 words on a topic. Ranging from what Alejandro Iñárritu meant by shooting almost the entire movie with close-ups that feel claustrophobic in Amores Perros. Or how Dave Chappelle uses a book as a metaphor to talk about his own story about the time he walked away from Chappelle's Show. I remember writing these 1000 odd words in less than an hour at times - primarily due to the deadline approaching like the walls at the Monaco GP.

Romantically, I've always loved the idea of writing about things that I have spent hours and hours thinking about. I guess that is the reason I was able to write 1000 word assignments under an hour and still manage to not fail. This deserves a shoutout to my professors and their generosity as well. Thank you!

I have always had topics that I felt were too obscure to write about in an academic setting. Now that I think about it, I am very sure the professors would have definitely encouraged the esoteric assignments. Then I realised that I have a blog now. I am going to make an attempt to replicate that feeling of writing a 1000 odd words under an hour about topics that have lived rent free for hours and hours in my head.

For the keen eye reader, it must be becoming painfully obvious that this entire post is going to hinge on the Jean-Luc Godard quote. For the inquisitive reader, you might then be trying to reverse engineer what could be the beginning, the middle, or the end. What do you think this paragraph is? Are you nearing the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end?

There is a fantastic spoken word piece by Phil Kaye that hinges on the Godard quote. I haven't quite made up my mind if I want this blogpost to just be a series of disparate paragraphs that you would need to re-arrange chronologically for it to make sense. On second thoughts, that does seem like a good idea. Maybe that is what this post will be about.

In this section of the blog, I plan on writing about topics that are very close to my heart - mostly to do with popular culture. I will be writing about comedians, movies, TV shows, about the etymology of a song, et cetera. And when I say comedians - I mean writing an entire post about one comedian's one stand-up bit, from a 2 hour long show, in a 10 year long career, and viewing their personality through that solitary bit's lens. When I say movies, or TV shows - I mean writing about the movies that I have watched and re-watched more times than should be allowed in a civilised society; about the TV shows that have captivated me to my bones and have, quite literally, changed the way I approach things in my life.

Imagine a blogpost wherein you can take any paragraph from it and it will work as a standalone piece of writing; But when you put together the entire thing, the seemingly disparate paragraphs create a flow that makes the sum of the parts more than the whole. Or rather, it makes the whole more than the sum of its parts. You know what I mean, right? I've had this idea rattling around in my head for quite a while now. Imagine if you could use this idea as an introductory post to a new section of your blog. Because as introductions go, they are quite vanilla, aren't they? You start with a gimmick, you hope that the gimmick works and isn't too gimmicky that it turns people off and increases the bounce rate of the page. You hope that they sign up to read what you promise them, say every second Monday of the month for the next year. Just like this post, you plan on writing 11 things over the course of the year that you've had in your head for a while now, you have these 11 blog posts ready in your head. But the second Monday of every month, you just wax poetic about things that you've thought about too much.

Blogpost structure:

- You start of by explaining what this section of your blog will be about

- You explain that this is an introduction to this section and you hint at the kind of content you can expect in the coming weeks

- You then explain the reason for creating this section, your love for writing about things that you've thought about a lot

- You then subtly mention that you aim to write about a 1000 words in less than an hour every second Monday. You also acknowledge that even though you mention every second Monday - you post the blogpost on your social media on Sunday night because you are greedy for views

- You end the blogpost with a quote that sounds smart

- Note to self - delete this part where you essentially give away the process where you list down what the structure will be like

If you liked what you read, and you want to read more - I publish new content every week - check out last week's blogpost where I fanboy about Mathematics. Do consider signing up - this will ensure you never miss a new blogpost.

Hope you have a good week!