Last month I was a paid film critic. I wrote my opinions on films both old and new and received capital for my opinions. It gave me an outlet to vent my frustrations, and sing praises to the things I loved. And it was a job. Not a hobby, but a job. Unexpectedly last month, that job ended.
This was honestly why I haven’t been producing content on this site very much. Between re-writes for my book, my part time job and the magazine, it was hard to make time. So while I am happy to return here, it has come at a cost.
It wasn’t exactly something I was getting a lot of money for. I perhaps earned around one hundred and ten dollars since being hired in December of last year. Still, it was something that made me feel more on the professional side when it came to writing, and the circumstances around it ending were both sudden and beyond my control.
Last year I wrote an article here on tonal shifts in stories, commenting on how to do such a thing right and what mistakes to avoid. That article was noticed by someone from Creators.Co, a fan run writing website where people would write content for online magazines to be read by the masses. They offered me a job. It was hardly a big magazine, but it was still about as fairy tale a story as you could expect.
I wrote on a variety of topics, from retrospectives of established classics to commentaries on current films. My most successful were still the articles on the Alien films. Between half of and a third of my earnings were based on that series alone. People ask what was the point of me hating Alien: Covenant so much? I got paid to share my opinion.
Then unexpectedly at work I got a message. It wasn’t about being fired or dissatisfaction with my content. At least those were things I would have had some control over. No. The message I got was that MoviePilot was closing its doors.
It came at a bad time. I was at work having a bad day, and on top of all that was this one additional bad thing. I wasn’t at all stressed with the money. I can survive without that extra ten bucks a month. What bothered me was what those ten dollars represented. I was being paid for my writing. My actual content and it was earning me money. That measly one hundred dollars is more than most writers see in a lifetime, and I knew it was a sign of things to come.
That it ended so unexpectedly was a major blow, as I wondered if perhaps maybe my position would climb at this modest little online venue. Sad to say, it wasn’t to be.
I must have spent three hours going through all fifty five of my articles and saving them, hoping that even when the magazine was going under I could find other places for this content to survive. I’ve already found a place run by a close friend of mine that will gladly be hosting my content dealing with monster movies. I won’t be paid, but I will be read. It’s at least a way to start over.
If there’s one thing I take away from this, it’s that I now have an actual publishing credit to showcase to potential buyers of this book. Here’s hoping that will be enough to turn another head or two.
Writer's Forge 