As touched upon in previous posts, film blogging is something that has always confounded me. Though as excellent way of showcasing my love of film for my own and various other websites that I contribute to, I can’t help but feel I’ve been sidetracked by the dream of becoming a full-fledged film critic and left all semblance of passion and individuality behind.
I can’t deny that it’s nice to be appreciated for what I do. The fact I’ve been invited to premieres, press screenings, film festivals and interviewed one or two established names within the film world, only proves that I’ve come on leaps and bounds from when I’ve started, tirelessly perfecting my craft and constantly trying to better myself as a writer. I feel, though, over the past few months, I’ve become a little too obsessed with pleasing the masses, attracting a sizeable readership and being punctual and consistent with my reviews that I’ve lost a sense of why I started writing in the first place.
No matter how many times I tell myself that it’s silly to expect too much of myself and push myself in ways I’ll never be able to reach, my mind won’t listen and there’s something inside me that feels it has to reach these pre-determined goals no matter the cost to my sanity or the perception other people have of me. I don’t want to be ramming my reviews done other people’s throats. If they want to read what I have to say, then they know where to look. I often feel that by over-exposing myself on social networking platforms it’s actually doing a disservice to my craft and making people think that I’m only doing to promote myself and make employers take notice of me.
I’m not, and if you know me well enough then you’ll know that I’m far too insecure about myself as a person and as a writer to ever knowingly adapt my writing to impress the writers I admire and look up to, but that’s what’s started to happen, and I’m not sure I like it.
I stumbled upon a quote earlier this evening while I was attempting to Google my worries away. The quote is by Cyril Connolly, an English intellectual, literary critic and writer (or so Wikipedia leads me to believe), and reads, “Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for a public and have no self.” I’m not exactly why this quote resonated with me so much, but I’m sure it has to do with what my boyfriend’s been trying to tell me for months: that I shouldn’t let myself get so wrapped up in my own or others’ crazy expectations and simply write however I want to write.
It may sound simple enough, and I’m sure by now most of you think I’m a silly adolescent simply writing about my problems as a way of drawing attention to myself. Well, I’m not, but you can think whatever you want to think. The fact of the matter is: writing about film is what makes me happy, but in order to let my passion run free I need to stop trying to match up to this insane definition of “film writer” I have in my head.
In my opinion, writing is an incredibly personal craft, and I want my writing to accurately represent who I am as a person and as a film enthusiast without ever coming across as pompous, attention-seeking or narrow-minded. After all, everyone is different and people should respect themselves enough to not have to constantly prove themselves.
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