Flasz On Film

I’ve had this place for a while now and, to be perfectly honest, despite the fact I have only taken it seriously in the last few years, it has ever so slowly grown over time. It’s nothing much, really, but at least I can see in a measurable way that every month brings more views than the previous one. And being a fan of discipline and persistence, all I can do is keep at it, especially because writing is a big thing for me.  

However, a little under a year ago I came up with this idea that I needed another outlet for my musings, especially because this place, as its name implies, was supposed to be focused on film-related writing. But I had all these other thoughts aimlessly drifting in the back of my mind without a viable way out. As I didn’t think it was a good idea to pitch to online outlets—and I still don’t because I honestly cannot deal with the hassle of trying to cozy up to random strangers and then having to handle their rejection; I’d rather face up to rejection by seeing how many people show up to read my thoughts and knowing the difference between this number and the total world population—I thought I’d sign up to Medium and write my non-movie related stuff there. And here I am now deciding it was a bad move.  

Look, I bet you will find plenty of people who’d tell you how great Medium is for them, how much money they’re earning from their writing, how they were able to quit their day jobs and how freeing it is for them to do their thing and earn both kudos and real-life moolah through the Medium Partner program. Funnily enough, you’d find all those people writing all those great things about Medium… on Medium and nowhere else. Which is already saying something.  

Now, I never intended for my stuff to bring in considerable revenue or for my writing to allow me to quit my job. I do what I do because I like doing it, not because I see it as a way to grind my way out of my nine-to-five. I like my nine-to-five. Sure, it would be an adventure to become a professional paid-for writer, but at this point—and my experience interacting with Medium helped me realize this even better—I’d rather continue writing stuff I care about writing, even if it means not making a penny out of it. 

What I care about more is the idea of writing stuff that at least has a chance of being accessed and read by other people, which is mostly why I decided to abandon Medium after nearly a year of using it as an outlet for my non-movie writing. I don’t have a huge platform or a massive following, so I cannot really count on a bunch of people clicking through links I leave behind on social media the way a horse leaves its carbon footprint in the middle of the road. Nobody knows me on Medium either and I don’t have it in me to write three listicles a day for the Medium algorithm (or whoever is responsible for highlighting articles and curating their daily newsletters) to pick it up and expose a wider readership to my output. In fact, this is something I passionately care about: I’m a writer, not a typist. I don’t care about pushing out content for the sake of doing so and it looks to me that to make it on Medium, I’d have to commit substantial resources to doing just that. Which would mean either deprioritizing or completely nixing my efforts on Flasz on Film, and I don’t want to do that either.  

I tried republishing some of my film essays on Medium as non-paywalled articles to increase my output there, in addition to writing paywalled articles about stuff I thought was not suitable for this place. Still, barely anybody saw my writing. Therefore, I concluded that I’d either have to pitch to Medium-based publications (and I don’t want to pitch to anyone, if you ask me), or ditch all the work I have sunk into this little corner of the Internet I had built for myself. And, again, I don’t want to do that either. Therefore, something had to give.  

So, I decided enough was enough and instead of artificially splitting my attention between a place I have nurtured for a long while and one I’d have to nurture just as much (if not more) to have a fighting chance of seeing it flourish (and I might have to abandon my artistic integrity to achieve that too), I would no longer put any of my writing on Medium and instead publish my non-film rants here. Gee, I feel like the Chancellor of the Exchequer announcing the lifting of the fiscal headroom to accommodate more borrowing, which is just replacing a made-up amount of money the country can borrow with a different one. Like, who cares about what I put here? Still, I feel I owe those who come over here every so often a little explanation as to why from now on they might see some articles about fitness, productivity, podcasting, writing or literally anything else I feel I’d like to write about.  

As I said before, I’d rather accommodate this place to include articles better suited for something called Flasz NOT on Film, rather than continue putting it in a place where nobody would ever read them because I don’t tend to write about X simple steps to get Y followers or seven habits to develop to quit your day job and become a professional typist writing things I don’t care about, so long as I can call myself a full-time writer.  

Therefore, the stuff I had already published on Medium will gradually make its way over here. And there isn’t as much of it anyway. About a dozen pieces. Which is probably why I was never successful on Medium in the first place because I don’t tend to write short and snappy micro-listicles or nano-essays where each sentence is its own paragraph. I pour the contents of my brain onto the screen whenever I feel I have a physiological need to do so and it’s almost never a quick affair. But each of these essays mattered to me and it matters to me more that someone would read it than for it to make a dime in ad revenue. Again, it only serves to underscore how torn I have been between trying to write over here and on Medium at the same time. Most of my output would naturally belong on Flasz on Film so it makes so much more sense to carve out a little corner of this website to accommodate whatever else I feel is a good idea to write about rather than to commit to developing a whole new platform.  

And as I also said, I don’t have enough of a following to start a Substack or anything like that and then see people flock to read my stuff while paying money to do so. Nobody will sign up to Medium to read what I have to say about podcasting or productivity, so I might as well place all my output here and commit to watering just one plant instead of dividing my attention between having to care for two.  

Ta-ta for now!