Quips notes 09.11.04

Lately, I've been trying to concentrate at least a portion of my spare time towards researching the jobs market for writing movie reviews. Don't get me wrong, though. I already have a full-time job. This focus has more to do with my working at making this thoroughly enjoyable, relatively expensive hobby pay for itself in some capacity. To start with, anyways. However, I'm not really getting any younger anytime in the foreseeable future, either. So, I'm looking to see what's available now, and possibly down the (short) road, for the long run. Locally, nationally, and internationally. Writing is writing, I figure. And, it seems as though at least some sources need the specific content that I'm offering - even if it appears to already be provided by somebody else at the moment.

Unfortunately, plugging something along the lines of 'job+movie+critic' into a search engine is pretty well a waste of time. The links that come back are either jobs in movies, jobs in general, movie descriptions containing the word 'job' or 'critic' within them, or posted articles by and of current movie critics who already have their jobs as, well, movie critics. It's the unfilled positions that I'm looking to find out more about. So, I just keep on a-lookin'. Slowly. Patiently. Relentlessly. Whenever time permits...

One site that I've managed to stumble upon and have begun regularly checking in with is http://www.freelancewriting.com. Frankly, I still wince at its rather ugly, flashy grocery tabloid-like front page everytime I drop by there. However, the content is pretty useful throughout and I like that they offer listings for both paying and gratis writing opportunities under separate categories. They also offer a wealth of free 'industry' info - outside of their newsletter and chatroom that visitors can sign up for and contribute to - that I've found to be interesting, since some of it relates to books being optioned for movies and such. Plus, the freelancewriting site lists various writing contests that boast cash prizes and/or possible publication.

An even uglier-looking, content-rich website that I've also discovered lately is http://www.writing-world.com. I've found it to primarily be good as a kind of short cut online resource for links to specific sites, as opposed to being the comprehensive one-stop 'sticky spot' that the freelancewriting site has turned out to be for me. I've pretty well exhausted trying to make use of the sub-sub-sub-directories offered through Google and Yahoo; hunting through the 90% of stuff that I'm not particularly interested in, just to find the few sites that I might find useful on some level or another. So, finding the writing-world site is a welcome alternative for my purposes.

Thanks for checking in.