Okay, so I open up Dianarchy expecting to see total anarchy in the design as the name would suggest, but instead I was confronted by a blogspot template. The bland white and baby blue color scheme left something to desired and the large, text only header and menu system with a few links made me want to see some pictures. Or graphics. Or something.
But I remind myself this is about the writing, so I dive right into the archives to the beginning of the blog, which got started by Diana (Diana=Dianarchy. I get it now) in August of 2003. The beginnings are fairly rocky, with posts about living in New York, taxi drivers and PMS. But there’s something rather curious about her writing, and I continue reading to see how this develops.
Further into the blog, I notice a distinct voice developing in the writing. Some posts tend to be long with dense paragraphs, but they have an interesting tone. It’s written from a stream-of-consciousness female perspective and topics don’t stray too far from definitively female subjects: Everything from men and the oh-so-female concerns of weight and looks to, again, men and being a graduate student. And men. The writing reads something like an episode of Sex in the City mixed with any album by The Cure. If you can imagine such a combination.
As I’ve said before, the design could benefit from a little pizzazz that would show off the writing, which should be the hero here. The writing is generally solid and well written and shows glimpses of true talent and I would like to see how that evolves. My major complaint is that the paragraphs tend to be long and could benefit from a few well-placed paragraph breaks and objective self-editing. Though, all-in-all, the witing itself shows plenty of potential.I’ll be checking in to see how the style develops.Dianarchy: A Day in the Life