August 17, 2005

When Eye on Soaps debuted in the year 2000, I issued about 30 invitations to people with whom I had carried on email relationships over the two years I'd spent handling the GH column for Soap Opera Central (Two Scoops, plus the news, spoilers, etc).  I knew I wanted to create a website that was based in intelligent commentary that would appeal to a wide spectrum of ABC soap viewers.  Spoilers, news flashes and such would be secondary to the commentary.  For that reason, I targeted the people who seemed to have a good bit to say about the shows, who were articulate and seemed to have a grasp on grammar, tact and the English language. 

We have gone through countless columnists since then.  Producing a viable column (and trust me, some of us, myself included, had columns that died the second they hit the internet) is fun and exciting for probably about a month or two, then it starts to turn into work.  You know your column is due and you are staring at a blank computer screen, blinking, wondering what to write about while a husband stares holes into your back, kids are bouncing up and down for attention and the dog is pawing at the door to get out again.  It's not easy to talk about the same characters and the same situations over and over and over for months on end and I've had a standing rule since Day #1:  If it's not fun, it doesn't get done, meaning that if it has become a chore to write your column each week, take a break or let it go completely.  I feel that if a writer is really struggling to extricate a column, it's going to come through in the writing and the column won't be very fun to read.  As a result, columnists tend to come and go.  Real life sometimes interferes and as it does so, often (very often) columnists make the decision to let the column go and turn that attention to more pressing matters in their worlds, either temporarily or permanently. 

As our revolving door of writers has spun around, we've said good-bye to some wonderful folks:  Chris Simon, Dot Matthews, Karen Albeck, Angie Forby, Stephanie Rodriguez, Leigh Russell, Abbie from Abbie's Lines of the Week, Naomi Clackum and so many other really cool people. 

Our Kate from "A Cynic Soaps Up" and "AMC Spoiler Commentary" is the last of the Mohicans who started the site with me.  Goddess bless her.

Historically, our site has been GH heavy.  I don't know if it is because, as a rule, GH is more strongly represented on the internet than the other two (three at the time we started with Port Charles) or if it is because the pool from which I chose my writers was from the GH side of SOC.  Regardless, EOS has always had easily 2-4 times as many GH writers as for the other soaps. 

Recently, Sage eagerly started work on the GH and OLTL Spoiler Commentary. Sherry and I had been handling these for a while and were well ready for a change.  It's great to see him so enthusiastic, bringing new blood to the project.  Since the OLTL Spoiler Commentary column was pretty much my last frontier other than my off topic work. I wondered what direction my on topic writing would take next. 

Around the same time, Coggie decided to pull up stakes and refocus on motherhood and in updating the columnist lists for the shows, I noticed once again how light we are on AMC and OLTL commentary.  In deference to that, I have decided to supplement as I can, dedicating the "Easy As ABC" column primarily to AMC and OLTL comments with a touch of GH thrown in.  (Inevitably, as soon as I declare that I am no longer writing about GH, I will have endless GH comments flowing through my head, so no need to boycott it completely).

I'll be weighing in sometime this week with a new column to see how it goes.  The "Easy As ABC" space has recently become pretty much a quarterly check in and if all goes well, I will be posting more regularly in the future.  Just wanted to share the thought and then we can all wait to see whether or not I can actually come up with something to say.  :)

Thanks for being here with us on our site,