Thursday, August 23, 2007

News! On the March!

For all of you who have been reading my (and everyone else's) stuff over at Screengrab, thank you. For the last six months or so, we've worked hard to increase activity over there, and these efforts have panned out, thanks largely to the dedication of our former editor, Bilge Ebiri, who was good enough to hire me based largely on my somewhat overblown rep as a "badass." All in all, I find it a little hard to believe I've lasted this long, but somehow I've been an active contributor for almost half a year now, which surprises me as much if not more than anyone.

That said, it's been tough. Since Bilge stepped down, I've felt added pressure to supply content to keep Screengrab at a consistently high level of awesomeness. Up to this point I've obliged, but it's been taking a toll on my writing, and I've recently come to the conclusion that I'm overextending myself. It would be one thing if I was writing for a living and as such had time to mull over my pieces all day, but as it stands the pressures of half a dozen pieces a week, coupled with increased responsibilities at work and the demands, however meager, of my social life, get to be overwhelming. So I recently informed Peter, my new editor, that I'll be scaling back my contributions to Screengrab to roughly three pieces per week. I'll still be doing my weekly Trailer Roundup, as well as some entries for Bilge's weekly lists. But rather than writing a Movie Moment column every week, it'll alternate weeks with When Good Directors Go Bad. I feel a little guilty about this, since the Movie Moment has become a signature column for me and I know that others enjoy it as well. But committing myself to two long pieces a week, amid everything else, got really hard to sustain, and it's a wonder I was able to keep it up as long as I did.

Anyway, I hope you aren't too broken up about this. Please continue to visit Screengrab, where Bryan, DK, Leonard, Phil, Faisal and the gang are continuing to fight the good fight for movie nerds everywhere. And if I'm not around as much, know that it's because when it comes to writing about what I love, I believe in quality over quantity.

2 comments:

Jason_alley2 said...

Yeah, totally understandable dude.

I would love a professional gig but I also worry that the obligation might take some of the enjoyment out of reviewing stuff at my own pace, even if it is for just like 6 or 7 people, haha.

Paul C. said...

Well, a lot of my problem stems from the fact that writing for Screengrab is merely my second job. I don't have a whole lot of other important stuff going on in my life, but I still have other things to worry about, and writing those longer pieces can take up a lot of time. I guess it all comes down to deciding how much effort is too much for the amount they're paying, which in my case isn't all that much. Or maybe I just want what I do write to be consistently good.