Category: Writingthoughts

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Pro! Duc! Tivity!

Because I’ve just wrapped up all my October invoicing, I can now tell you that I wrote 198 stories of varying lengths last month* (Six for Time, which is a new record since I switched to longer-form Op-Eds for them), in addition to 4 podcasts and a live television appearance. All of that’s just work; there’s also been sick dogs, vet visits, regular gym sessions, trips out of town and more happening. Suddenly, the reasons behind my seemingly-permanent exhaustion last month become worryingly clear.

The funny/not funny at all thing about doing invoicing is that you suddenly realize how horrendously you’re undervalued, if you’re me. I worked out that I am making a stupidly low amount of money from two of my regular outlets, which makes me think that it may be time to start looking for other places to spend my time/effort…

(* It’s actually more; there are at least two stories I’ve written that haven’t appeared either yet or never will, for reasons that I don’t entirely understand. Plus, there are all the blog posts and things I wrote for this site, too, but they don’t really count because they’re not for work; I don’t even want to think about what happens when I add that to the list.)

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“Pre-Impressions”

November 7 marks the first day of Marvel Comics’ initial wave of new releases for Marvel NOW! with a month including a number of high-profile relaunches with many more to come through January 2013. With all the hype and anticipation surrounding the three-month launch window of Marvel NOW!, we thought we’d share the CBR Staff’s impressions of the publishing initiative’s titles before the books hit stands. Check out the top picks of the CBR Staff below and then head to the forums to discuss what you’re most excited about in the coming months.

I wouldn’t normally note something like this, but this story on CBR today is the story that Chad Nevett described as “sucking Marvel’s cock and pretending it’s journalism” on CBR the other day. I don’t know quite why I am so surprised to see it go up, especially so close to Chad’s post calling it out for what it is, but I am. Somewhat proving Chad’s point about it in some way, it’s promoted twice on the front page of the site as I write.

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“There’s No Silver Bullet Anymore”

 

I think the institutions that have a real commitment to journalism understand that there is a real future of journalism in interactive news and in interactive storytelling and multimedia storytelling. There’s no silver bullet anymore. There’s no longer just an article, or there’s no longer just a news report on television at 6 p.m. or just the radio in the evenings. There’s a whole bunch of different ways that people are consuming their news nowadays. That’s as affected by technology as it affected by the news and people.

From here. There’s something about that “there’s no longer just an article” that sticks with me. In an interactive media world, is there such a thing as a news story, or is everything “news cycles” these days? If it’s the latter, what is the purposes of being a writer, exactly?

 

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Stay Positive

I think I bristle at the “you’re so negative” thing that I get every couple of months because it ain’t true. I can be, have been, and will be negative, sure. But if you look at my work, you’d have to be crazy to come to that judgment. ‘cause, here’s the other thing about writing about comics: no one pays attention to everything online, but everyone pays attention to certain things, and posts that are going at someone or negative get a lot of attention. They can and will outshine the sloppiest kiss you ever laid on a comic.

From here. Quoted for truth.

Of course, sometimes positivity just doesn’t work, either. I started, the other week, just showing art from comics that blew me away on the Newsarama blog. They weren’t the best known comics, but they looked amazing. How quickly do you think I got accused of shilling for publishers? Spoiler: Very.

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Two For The Price of One

This is a screenshot from the front page of Time.com as I write these very words. Those two un-pixelated stories? They’re both by me; weirdly and somewhat wonderfully, I ended up doing two stories for Time this week (Yes, the Lucasfilm/Disney thing was a last-minute thing, because I journalist well at times, thank you very much) and they both ended up on the front page of Time.com. I swear, I’m almost getting good at this writer thing.

The stories can be found here (Disney/Lucasfilm) and here (Horror on Broadcast TV), respectively.

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“Usually, People Get Paid for Endorsements, Right?”

I sure as hell won’t miss getting requests to participate in articles where you list all of the Marvel NOW! books you’re looking forward to and why. Oh, not a rundown of all of the titles and what you think of each. No, just what books you’re looking forward to! Because it’s a fun article! And it’s only fun when it’s positive and pretty flowers and free advertising for the largest comic publisher in North America! I don’t know if I’d like it more or less if money had been offered. I guess getting paid to participate in an article like that would be more honest. I mean, it’s a fucking ad for a bunch of comics — an endorsement! And, usually, people get paid for endorsements, right? Then again, it’s not like this is Marvel asking that this article happen, it’s just something that someone came up with, because it’s a ‘fun idea.’ How sad is that… ‘Fun’ equals ‘free promotion.’ Not actual balanced content — not even the illusion of it. Hey, if you genuinely love something, then shout it from the roof. I’ve never shied away from that. But, this… this is shilling pure and simple. Sucking Marvel’s cock and pretending it’s journalism.

From here, where Chad Nevett writes about his decision to step back from writing for The Comics Internet and explains why. He’s not wrong, but I’m still surprised that this saw print on ComicBookResources itself, simply because it’s… I don’t know, pulling back the curtain a little bit too much for comfort, maybe? I can’t imagine that there aren’t as many CBR writers who’d see this and think “I am a sell out” as there will be people reading it and thinking “I KNEW IT!” (This isn’t just something that is restricted to CBR, by the way; Newsarama and iFanboy and other comic sites do it just as much, too. And, yes, I write for many of these comic sites, and I sometimes contribute to this type of thing, for the purposes of full disclosure). Nonetheless, I’m really glad he wrote it; I think it’s smart and passionate and needed to be said by someone who actually has experience in this field. I just wonder what the reaction will be, both privately and publicly, is all.

…Somewhere in my head are thoughts about “fun articles” and positivity and the way in which they do serve a purpose beyond shilling or cowering to publishers/creators/whatever, but they’re nowhere near well-formed enough to actually write into anything coherent yet. One day. I still have to write about being on television last week, too.

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What Are Our Tote Bag Rewards?

Actually raising money is only part of the challenge with Kickstarter, which has to approve a project in the first place. The Amicos’ first Kickstarter campaign pitch last winter was rejected because the rewards they proposed — the special add-on that donors gets based on the amount they donate — weren’t good enough. (Update: Kickstarter’s Justin Kazmark emailed me after this article went up to say that the first proposal wasn’t rejected per se. “Someone from our team suggested they just give more thought to their rewards before launching,” he said.) This time around, awards varied from donors names being published in a “thank you” post ($10 or more) to getting the Homicide Watch team to guest-teach a class or lecture ($5,000 or more).

“Kickstarter is an odd fit for journalism in many ways,” Laura said. “The symptom of that to me is that rewards are so problematic. Public media does tote bags. Tote bags even have nothing to do with what you’re actually producing, which is the point of Kickstarter. It doesn’t have anything to do with the product we’re offering, necessarily.”

From here.

I have a weird fascination with crowdfunding, and especially the idea of crowdfunding what I do, which is journalism, I guess. Discovering that people have successfully done it already is oddly comforting, to be honest.

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What Does The Troll Want?

Is the troll engaging in bigoted speech in order to call out, and therefore subvert, genuine expressions of bigotry? Is the troll attempting to make a larger claim about sensationalist corporate media? Is the troll merely a racist or misogynist who hides behind trollings. Is the troll engaging in bigoted speech in order to call out, and therefore subvert, genuine expressions of bigotry? Is the troll attempting to make a larger claim about sensationalist corporate media? Is the troll merely a racist or misogynist who hides behind trolling as a way to distance him or herself from his or her own beliefs? Some combination of the three? Something else entirely? Regardless of the insights these sorts of questions might yield, it is critical to acknowledge that the troll’s reasoning — what they really think about a given subject — is ultimately less important than the effects his or her behaviors have. Put simply, whether or not the troll “really” hates women, for example, doesn’t matter if the targeted women feel hated as a way to distance him or herself from his or her own beliefs? Some combination of the three? Something else entirely? Regardless of the insights these sorts of questions might yield, it is critical to acknowledge that the troll’s reasoning — what they really think about a given subject — is ultimately less important than the effects his or her behaviors have. Put simply, whether or not the troll “really” hates women, for example, doesn’t matter if the targeted women feel hated.

From here. I have such an odd relationship with trolls, and the purposes of trolling; I can’t help but feel that there really is some value to trolling, sometimes, as weird as that sounds.

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Twilight and True-Life Writing Stories

Time.com has had a facelift, which means that the Top 10 Most Popular Entertainment Stories box is gone – gone! – and replaced by a less-visually interesting Top 5, so I doubt I’ll see my stories appear there (and take a screencap for here) as often. Nonetheless, here’s this week’s story, all about the fact that The Twilight Saga movies are rumored to be continuing past the original novel series, and why that’s a bad idea. Watch as I skillfully weave in Planet of The Apes, Before Watchmen and Frasier!

Strange but true fact about the writing of this week’s story: It happened on Monday, but Monday was a very, very odd day for reasons which I shall share shortly (Spoiler: Canada was involved), and I had next-to-no time to actually write the story. I’d done all the research already – that’s usually done before Monday begins, no matter what – and I had a vague through-line of what I wanted to write, but whereas other Time pieces have taken the best part of a day (and sometimes more) to put together, various circumstances conspired to give me, at best, three or four hours or so. Knowing that I didn’t have time to worry about it, I just sat down and wrote, and sped through it, convinced that I’d get far more edits than usual but would have the time to re-write the next day anyway. And then… the least amount of edits ever requested for a Time piece of mine*.

There’s a lesson in there, somewhere.

(* Of course, the pitching process for this week was unusually hard, so maybe there’s a karma thing going on there.)

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I Can Hear The Soft Breathing of The Girl That I Love

A genuinely weird day, with things breaking up what would normally be my working rhythm, such as it is – A vet’s visit, phone calls with the accountant and the resultant rush and stress that provided, lunch with a friend – to the point where I never felt like I settled into the day at all. Everything was continually just rushing to meet deadlines, the entire day having that I’m late I’m late feeling and discomfort the entire time, meaning that it’s 6pm and I still haven’t directed you to my Time piece for the week, about the way in which the new Beauty and The Beast show manages to miss the point of the entire B&TB fairy tale. My research for this one? Watching lots of versions of Beauty and The Beast, which made for an odd weekend, I can tell you.