Time for another blog birthday: Ask Me Anything!

My recent Blogger Recognition Award post gave me the chance to look back on how my blog came to be. Now, dear readers, April 15th – my blog birthday – is approaching again, and I had so much fun celebrating the occasion last year that I'm going to do it again, and in similar fashion – by hosting an Ask Me Anything event.

Ask Me Anything is quite self-explanatory – if there's any question under the Sun to which you would be interested to know my answer, here's your chance! While coming up with words of advice to new bloggers for the Blogger Recognition Award, I discussed how I think it considerably ups a blog's readability if you get the feeling that there's a real person behind the blog posts. So, this is a chance for my readers to maybe get to know me a little better, and to ask any questions that don't really fit into our normal means of blogger-reader communication – the comments section, that is.

So does Anything really mean... Anything? Basically, yes! While I'm always happy to discuss anything related to my usual blog content – books, fictional characters, trends in the culture scene, and some more books, etc. – you don't necessarily have to stick to these. The only real limits I can think of are 1) I obviously won't be giving out any personal information such as my phone number or my whereabouts and I still don't want to share any pictures of myself, 2) everything concerning my family members and friends is strictly off the Internet. Now I can't really see why anyone would have a burning desire to ask anything that oversteps these two rules, but there they are, properly worded, for clarity's sake. Obviously, I reserve the right to ignore any questions that I don't feel comfortable answering for one reason or another, but it's more a precaution than an actual worry. Honestly, the more creative and thought-provoking questions you come up with, the more excitement it will bring to me as a blogger!

I hosted my first Ask Me Anything event last year, you can see here what my readers asked back then. This year, I will give the Answer Post on the proper anniversary date, April 15th. So, you have a little over three weeks to submit your questions to the comments section of this post. Don't be shy, we'll have fun celebrating! It makes no difference whether you are a regular guest or a new visitor, an active commentator or a quiet reader – everyone is sincerely invited to celebrate the second anniversary of Music & My Mind!

Oh, in case anyone was wondering why there haven't been that many blog posts lately (because I was) – honestly, I've just got too many great blogging ideas zooming around my head and I can't decide in which order to deal with them! And as if my already-existing projects (such as all the various reading lists you can see on the top bar) weren't enough, some ungovernable part of my mind decided that now was the good time to start re-watching Doctor Who from the 2005 Series One onwards, with a notebook – yes, I really do that when I want to review something properly. So, expect crazy-long reviews of the eight series of "new" Doctor Who; I really hope to finish them by the time Series Nine arrives!

That will be the end of this not-so-short announcement – let's get ready to party!

Blogger Recognition Award

Hamlette has awarded me with the Blogger Recognition Award! Salutations and thanks to you, Hamlette – I hope you already know how much I appreciate and admire your dedication to your blogs, those fun blog events you have hosted, and all those vastly intelligent comments you have made while visiting here. You probably also know how eagerly I'll jump at any kind of blog challenge or tag that is thrown my way, so here I go!

Rules and Regulations:

• Attach the award.
• Thank the person who nominated you.
• Provide a link to the original post at Edge of Night
• Give a brief story of how your blog got started and a piece or two of advice for new bloggers.
• Select 15 blogs to nominate.
• Comment on each nominee's blog and let them know that you've nominated them.

How it began

Somewhere around the spring of 2013 I started having the feeling that I had quite a lot to say about the way I experienced literature, music and drama. At the time I hardly had any people in my life who shared those interests with the same enthusiasm and critical eye as I did, so because of the lack of arts-related face-to-face communication, I had the idea of putting up a blog. I remembered my favourite literature course in (the Finnish equivalent of) high school where our assignments included reading a controversial classic novel and writing a review on it. Even though I read Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary for that assignment and I didn't appreciate it much, that course was among the best of my high school experiences because the teacher was the best ever and I discovered that writing reviews was something that really resonated with me. 

The best decisions I've made in my life have always been spur-of-the-moment. Once the idea of starting a culture blog had settled nicely in my head, I spent the next day or two setting up an account on Blogger, and on April 15th, 2013 I wrote my first blog post. 

Many different bloggers served as inspiration and role models for Music & My Mind, but there was a person with the online-name Frankie Savage who deserves a special mention. She was my friend in the Blogiverse as well as in real life, and she was the one who answered my silly questions when I first couldn't figure out how Blogger worked. The reason why I have to refer to Frankie in past tense is that she sadly passed away just before Christmas in 2014, due to a long and serious illness. She was just 24 years old and one of the wisest, strongest, simply the best people I have ever known. All the comments on this blog made by Frankie Savage or Kristallikettu are hers, and though I'm over the worst shock of her passing, it still makes me terribly sad to think that I'll never get to talk to her again. Still, I'm glad I'm able to at least show her a bit of gratitude in this blog post.

Advice for new bloggers

• First and foremost, write about the things that interest you, in a style that feels natural to you!
• Using labels and tags on your blog posts makes it loads, and I mean it, loads easier for your readers to browse around your blog and target the posts that would most interest them, and to get a general overview on the topics that you write about.
• Experiment with different forms of writing. For example, if you have review blog like me, you don't always have to write the regular kinds of reviews. You could do Top Ten lists, comparison posts, open letters... Just use your imagination! It will make your blog so much more interesting.
• Be cautious with your blog's layout. Most people find neon-green text on a bright red background a little irritating to read.
• Even if your blog is not intended as a diary of your personal life and you should always be very careful about sharing personal details online, I would still suggest that you give your blog a little touch of your personality. I like to feel like what I'm reading comes from a real person, rather than a fact-sprouting machine. Make your blog sound like you, write an introduction page that makes readers feel welcome, and demonstrate how the things you write about stem from your real-life experiences.
• This is something I should really work on myself: visit other blogs as often as you can, and look out for new blogs to add on your reading list. You want people to comment on your blog, right? The best way to achieve this is commenting on other people's blogs. Also, participate in any interesting blogging events that you can find. They are always loads of fun (if they are hosted well) and it's one of the best ways to find bloggers who share your interests and expand your social blogging circles.

Now, nominating 15 other blogs is the tricky part. Like I said, I haven't been very actively working on my blog circles, so I'll just see how many nominees I can come up with.

• Hayden at The Story Girl
• Mariah Martinez at Godwottery Shenanigans
• Miss Dashwood at Yet Another Period Drama Blog
• Miss Laurie at Old-Fashioned Charm
• Siiri L. at Some Superfluous Opinions
• And a posthumous nomination for dearest Frankie Savage

Happy blogging and blog-surfing to you all!