Parents who eat Oreos…have children who eat Oreos.
Just in case someone hasn’t seen that ad. The study Jake mentions is real, and I’m surprised it took as long as it did for me to come up with that joke. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if someone already made it by now. I haven’t seen it.
- Reviewers Unknown: I thought I posted my review of the new The Tomorrow People to RU already. Well, better late than never.
- The Clutter Reports: If you’ve missed previous postings, I look at the “He-Man Meets Ram-Man” minicomic.
If you’re reading this from the homepage the rest of this article is going to be behind the “jump” because it’s also going to serve as a “programming note” rather than take up extra time. You will be happy to know that I grabbed a few new comics to read and there are a couple of titles I still want to follow, just not as many as I used to. I’ll explain all of that in a moment. I also picked up a bunch of the giveaway comics as part of Free Comic Book Day’s “Halloween Comic” event. So you’ll be getting a bonus comic review…at 12 AM ET! New comics will be at the usual 12 PM slot (and we’ll have a “Best Scene” winner next week). But that’s just a warm-up for what’s to come here at the Spotlight.
As you may know I recently lost my job, and I’ve been on unemployment for a few weeks now. I decided that, rather than try to return to the kind of job I hated, I would try to make the work I’ve done here at the Spotlight into my career, either through monetizing the site or doing freelance work. That means I need to get to work to make this site more than a hobby. What that DOESN’T mean is changing the tone or style of the Spotlight because this is still an extension of my thoughts on storytelling as I continue to strive for the goal of becoming a storyteller, which I would also like to make a living from.
Some of these additions I’ve been thinking about for a while but if you’ve been following me on Twitter you know that the past two months (September and October) have been…eventful. Now things are finally settling and I need to think about my future. Unemployment won’t last forever and I have plans for the future. While this hopefully includes becoming a comic writer, maybe even a novel before I’m through, I’m focusing on more immediate plans.
One of the changes I’ll be making is an addition. I really need to get through my older comics so I can trim my bloated collection and only six reviews a week isn’t enough, especially if I’m going to try to bring back some new comics. I’ve been toying with adding a second comic review, at the 12 AM ET slot (where I’m doing the Halloween Comic pick-up reviews this week) to go with the usual 12 PM ET slot, and the reviews are my most popular feature. 7 PM ET will still be my commentary or in-depth review of a movie, storyline, TV show, or what have you that is the core of the site and why I started it. As for 7 AM? If I get a paid writing gig, which will require me to alter my style to suit the site’s, I’ll have a link there. I’m going to test that with links once I get a handle on the workload (I still have to look for work) to other articles to see what happens, since I’m giving myself quite a workload here. If I have a writing gig, filler articles and filler videos may pop-up at the PM slot. Things I review here are still things that interest me or I think folks should take a look at. I don’t want to get into the habit of solicited reviews, at least where the owner is paying me to write about their stuff. On another site? Sure. Here, I want to keep things about my perspective and interests and the things I track down or somebody shows me that grabs my attention.
Then there’s the videos. While I hope to get enough of a viewership either through Blip or YouTube to get an income out of it, part of doing that is putting out more videos. There’s also the backlog of convention footage and review topics I want to cover. So I’m going to try to ramp up video output, although this will be determined based on my workload. I also want to get the Blip and YouTube pages up to snuff to draw viewers. I’m not going to stress myself into the hospital or burn myself out of BW altogether but this is all stuff I enjoy doing anyway, and I’m already dealing with perfectionism versus wanting to get it done. It will be as good as a one-man-who-barely-knows-what-he’s-doing production can be. I also want to continue making content for The Clutter Reports (because it will help me organize things around here) and Reviewers Unknown (which is usually BW repeats but every now and then I’d like to do something just for them).
So this site will either be income or resume but unless something better comes along it needs to be one or both. This means more, hopefully better content, but hopefully will still be fun. I have some new article and video ideas I need to get done, which means really learning the software I’m using. I’m going to try not to change things too much since I want to continue doing what I hope is original or at least an original take. If my planned schedule works this may succeed. If not, I’ll cut back to save my sanity and make sure I still enjoy doing this before it becomes as much a chore as my previous job. I’m in God’s hands right now and I can only hope I’m doing the right thing and bringing you as good a BW Media Spotlight as I can. Stay tuned.
BW Media Spotlight 