Writing a review, and what happens next
For a little over 12 months I have been a writer, of sorts, posting new content to the nostalgia website retroist.com. During my ongoing tenure with the site I have written about all manner of oddities spawned from decades past, and it’s been a lot of fun.
However, after 300 posts, I had never really “reviewed” anything. There have been plenty of occasions where I’ve posted fan-art and proclaimed the artist to be amazing, or writen about a film that I think is worth other people’s attention, but I hadn’t had opportunity to critique something in the way that a reviewer might.
That changed when I was offered the opportunity to review a comic book a couple of months ago. It seems that writing about one thing can lead to writing about another — my brief look at at a new 80's comic series put me on the radar of the PR company involved with the launch of another new 80's comic series, and I soon received an email offering me a glimpse at the upcoming first issue.
As a fan of the 80's TV show that this new comic was based on, I was very happy to take a look and I read through the digitial copy several times, with each iteration narrowing my focus on the aspects that I would later put in my review. Putting those thoughts into actual words was a surprisingly easy affair and my post went from draft to published in no time at all.
At the time I didn’t dwell too much on my review, happy in the knowledge that it was being read and shared with an audience who were interested in it. A few days later I Googled the comic book title, expecting to see other reviews, eager to read the thoughts of others. Oddly, I found none.
It seemed I was the first to review the title and it was my review being shared by the publisher on Facebook, tweeted by the PR company and commented on by one of the creators on his website. This was very exciting. Sure, my review hadn’t lit up the internet but, to me, my review was now important and so I started to think of ways to capitalise on that.
I went back to the PR company and asked if I could do a follow-up to my review — a Q&A with the creators. The PR company said “sure” and I quickly put together a list of questions that I thought would be fun for them to answer. A week later and I received another email, complete with the answers to my questions from the creators, both of whom were gracious and entertaining in their replies.
This is where I stand today. The Q&A has now been published to the wilds of the internet, and like the review that came before it, my post looks like it is the first to do what it is doing. I’m excited once again!
So excited that I’ve also taken the opportunity to write about my writing here at Medium. My hope, if any readers get this far, is that others will be inspired to put fingers to keys and do something similar. You never know what will happen to your words.
