My name is Chris, and I have a problem.
For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to run a website. The first thing I did when I got a 56K connection was to design a Simpsons fan-page. As it was 2001 or so, its bright yellow background and images stretched beyond comprehension were perfectly acceptable. However, like my other projects to come – from The Happy Teacake, to the past ninety-four versions of Unmurdered – I abandoned it shortly after the final product was published on the web. If you know where to look, you’ll probably find remnants of every website I’ve made post-Geocities.
My problem was that I always wanted to look at the bigger picture. I wasn’t satisfied with running a review site or a fan site enjoyed just by my closest friends. I wanted to conquer the world wide web through my incoherent scribblings and inappropriate use of grammar, backed by legions of readers commenting with remarks like ‘lol, good one’. My intentions were never financial – I only use donate buttons and Google Adsense in hope of raking back the £25 per year it costs to run a site – I just didn’t want to talk to myself.
I bought the Unmurdered name back in early 2008. When I started, I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do. Previously, I had kept my use of comedy to whatever screenplay I was writing. But after reading articles by Charlie Brooker, I realised I could inject comedy into the article form. So I spent the best part of the next two years trying to emulate that, while bringing in other influences such as Simpsons-esque one-liners and absurdist comedy so it wasn’t a complete ripoff. In theory, this should’ve slowly brought in an audience if I’d kept an ongoing archive that built up to a Google search engine pleasing extent.
But I kept tearing Unmurdered down, building it back up, writing an article, being unhappy with what I’d written, tearing it down, repeat ad nauseam. Even though I’d dedicated two years of my spare time to it, I was never comfortable with the format. It’s weird because my years of watching nothing but animated comedies and sitcoms on UKTV Gold has made me somewhat decent at writing one-liners, but only in the context of dialogue in a screenplay. The umm-ing and ahh-ing over if a line in an article made sense was too overwhelming to let it be – especially as it had been published for everyone to see – which was why I constantly deleted stuff.
I am officially declaring today that phase of my writing is over. I will continue to write comedy scripts, and will inject a bit of humour in my articles – I’m only a humourless drone in the flesh – but I feel it’s pointless to continue mentally torturing myself when I’m happier presenting blogs like this where I don’t have to crack a joke twice a paragraph to make the format “work”.
So what can you expect from Unmurdered now? Just a blog. A muddled up bundle of thoughts and creativity too esoteric for anyone outside my close circle of friends to care about. Like it should’ve been all along.
PS: I will probably change my mind and delete this by Monday.
