Staying drunk on writing

I've been writing for six years come this October. As of today, I write film reviews for four different websites, write album reviews for two of those four, infrequently post blogs about my progress in college, host a recurring show on YouTube where I review new products such as beverages and food items, and am currently working on the follow-up to my recently released mixtape. I've been at all this for so long that I cannot remember waking up and not checking my ever-growing schedule of films to watch (I'm booked until the middle of October) or seeing if I have an album to review today. To say I do all of this labor - buying/renting the films and albums, watching films, listening to albums, writing the respective reviews, and promoting the pieces I release - and don't make a dime still stuns many to this day.

There was a point when, upon telling people all I did or concluding a blog on my progress, I'd say that all of this was going towards one thing and that sole thing was "my future," as I put it. Now, I see everything I do at the moment less a potential job in the future and more a result of the dedicated emphasis I put on my passions for writing and film every day of my life. When people ask if I plan to do film and/or music criticism for a career in the future, there was a time I answered that question with a definite yes. Now, when people ask that same question, I dance around it like a seasoned politician, saying I'll continue to explore my options in college and try to "do something with writing."

Writers of any kind have it incredibly difficult today. With print media, at least on a statewide scale, growing obsolete, writers are as replaceable as batteries. The rise in news, media, and entertainment websites has ostensibly given aspiring journalists and writers more job opportunities, however, most of these gigs are on a freelance basis. Why pay a writer a set salary or by number of articles he or she writes if they have one good article and there is a barrage of other writers looking for work with an article just as good? If corporations can be malleable and uncommitted to a staff, it only works out in favor for them as a business.

Film critics have it difficult too; the anomaly of the current state of them is that they have their hands filled with films coming from multiple different angles yet they aren't being hired and veteran critics are being fired. There are films in theaters, both in limited and wide release, films released directly to DVD, films released directly to video-on-demand, films from the past, and so on, yet the job market has been saturated with "user reviews" on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes so much so that the professional film critic's job is something nearly anyone can do and anyone can market themselves as. I'm no bigger a film critic than another writer with a blog - maybe he actually owns his domain name. Maybe he even makes money.

I've been exhaustively promoting my own work for years on end, and I've been grateful to receive the recognition I have. "I've been misunderstood," is a popular phrase amongst writers, but it's one I cannot accurately say. I've been blessed to be understood in my field since I began writing, receiving awards, multiple website deals, and benefits because I'm a good writer. To say I'm incredibly happy at my current stage in the game, however, isn't accurate, but to say I'm fortunate most certainly is. I feel, given my experience and my efforts, I should probably have a bigger reach, but, in an act of counting my blessings and recognizing my progress, I am definitely better off than many. If it wasn't for my writing, I can confidently say I wouldn't be in college. If I wasn't an English major, I wouldn't know what the hell I'd be.

I only write this to remind myself and hundreds, if not thousands (if I can embellish my meager reach), of other writers to simply stay drunk on writing. I feel I've hit a slump in my work where I'm not commanding much more of a reach despite intense promotion (business cards, Facebook page, etc) than I've had in the past. However, I'm not about to give up one of the only thing I was ever good at.

Writers of any kind need to fight this kind of recurring disillusionment. If I can compare it to the shingles disease, it's something that's inside many of us just waiting to come out at any given time. If we don't see evident progress of our work, or, perhaps worse, we don't see any growing interest or payoff, we understandably become frustrated, even apathetic, to the point where many of us take a break from writing (something I've refused to do since I began, knowing how hard it would be to get back in a groove).

This, however, is much easier said than done. This past weekend, particularly last night, where I sat on my porch until almost 1am, had me contemplating where I'm headed as a writer and what, if anything, major lies ahead of me. I recalled even being young and, while I was still hopeful I'd make it as a full-time film critic, had the nudging thought in the back of my mind that I'd probably wind up working a satisfactory job with a reasonable wage and only do this kind of writing on the side (keep in mind, I was also about seven or eight when I had this nudging thought).

I wasn't staying drunk on writing then; in fact, I wasn't even writing. When I began in 2009, everything changed. I found myself having a mission every day, be it reviewing something, voicing my opinions through blog posts, or watching some kind of film. It was all going to one thing and that was not entirely my future, but my portfolio, which is brimful with almost two-thousand reviews, two-hundred album reviews, over one-hundred unique blogs, and much more.

With this, I'm simply reminding myself and the legion of other writers in the same position as me to keep writing. I can't promise you or myself that something lucrative or beneficial will come out of it, though. I won't sit here and emptily say, "it will get better" or "grind hard and you'll succeed." The fact it, you can bust your ass day in and day out and still come up short. That's a grueling lesson for anyone to learn and, in a world filled with broken promises and a brutal and unforgiving economy, that notion only grows each and every day. At this point, all I can say to myself and everyone in my position is to keep writing, for you might as well be productive and disillusioned than lackadaisical and disillusioned; might as well utilize the gas in the tank and ride the bike until the wheels fall off.