Friday Poetry Blog Review: On Few Miles

A journey in words can go a long way. Engrossed in words, the journey may go for eons, yet we may feel like it has only been a few minutes. It may be a marathon, a hurdle race of millions of meters, yet at the end, if we ever reach it, it may feel like we’ve been traveling only a few miles. Today, I review the blog of a friend, my co-host here at Review Tuesdays, Someone is Special aka SiS. He’s called his blog Few Miles, and we’ll travel some few miles with him here today.

Saravana Kumar, writing under the pen name of SiS began his writing journey with a poem titled “Sorry” but he’s continued to pen down poems and stories which need no apologies. He’s woken up angels in his dreams, and the blog’s poems, he says, are inspired by the dream girl. Given his pen name by his sweet friend, he continues to use the name and with the words he pens, he tries to cross the many hurdles and critics to remain focused as a writer with myriad thoughts in his mind.

The blog Few Miles’ template has been edited by him, a simple look with a mix of orange, blue and the main background of white. The blog header has a logo “FM” that is also the Faison of the blog. The blog has a single sidebar to the right, and the sidebar houses a large assortment of widgets; from twitter contact buttons, to the award badges he’s won on various platforms, from archives and favorite posts, to the recent comments list and category cloud. The blog has, so far, got visits from more than a hundred different countries since beginning in October 2009, and has 242 posts to-date.

SiS is not a “particular” writer; in the sense, he doesn’t prefer a particular form, or genre for that matter. He writes what comes to his mind at that time, or depending on if a meme inspires him. If he feels unable to write, he’s willing to take breaks to refresh his muse. SiS likes to write for contests, be it poetry or prose and experiments with the same. His themes vary from causes to nature, but most of his readers would recognize that the theme that dominates the others is romance. He is a self confessed “romancer” and his stories have that emotional pull to it. Quite a few of his posts also revolve around cricket so I think he is a great follower of the sport as well. SiS writes regularly for memes, and is also the host of a meme called Room for Romance, a monthly meme with themes based on his favorite emotion.

Being a regular writer, his frequency of posting is high, and though is he is talented to hold the quality, depending on the frame of mind he is in; his posts do have a tendency to waver on that front. A positive point about SiS is that he takes critique well and works on his posts to get better as he writes. I’ve been reading him for a while now, and I’d say I have a lot of favorites from his posts to list out here. If any of you are very much addicted to romance in reading, I’d say his blog would be a drug to you. On a personal note, I’d very much say him to work on his determination, as I’ve known him to think of quitting when results are not going his way.

As a reader, I think the first thing I’d look at in a blog is the post. As a writer, I feel that I would also want my reader to read the post. In your blog, I find the sidebar assortment of widgets to be overwhelming. When the badges of winning entries you have had in competitions is present directly, the reader would be distracted to reading that instead (though it being there as a celebration of your success is quite understandable). If possible, try to declutch it somehow. Explore more themes other than romance in your long stories. Look to better yourself each time. I think you are good already, but still aim for the perfection that is elusive. A writer’s journey is always toward perfection, hence the reason for it being an endless one. Other than that, I’m quite happy as a reader to visit the blog. Keep going!

Glad to review your blog, and let me know how you found it, if you’ve found me wavering on some point. Cheers and have a lovely week ahead.

From the Review Tuesdays team here at Jingle Poetry Community,

The Amateur Poet,