Your options for displaying your work to potential clients
As with any other industry, getting into professional writing comes with its own set of expectations, unspoken rules, and inexplicable taboos.
Like your resume in a corporate job market, a writing portfolio is what you show off to potential clients to prove that you can do the job they’re asking for (or that you’re asking them for — but that’s another story). It’s a collection of things that give you credibility and make you look as legitimate and professional as possible.
Writing portfolios include both sample pieces of your writing that can stand on their own and standard resume fair…
Why that descriptor carries creepy vibes, and how to reword it
I recently wrote a piece for The Gamer about Stream Hatchet’s latest reports on trends in the gaming world. It was an interesting report; streaming has gone up significantly because of the pandemic, with the most popularly watched games being League of Legends, Fortnite, and PUBG Mobile, to no one’s surprise. Twitch still leads as the most-watched platform, but YouTube and Facebook Gaming are following closely behind.
How to succeed in stage work without ever really panicking.
When I auditioned for the very first time, I was a nervous mess of an eighth-grader. We were doing a very small stage production as a class, and I was guaranteed a part of some description, but I had never acted before, and I didn’t like standing in front of my classmates and being judged. At the time, I didn’t have the Internet to lend a hand — I was free-falling into my cold read with nothing but my wits and a lot of stomach butterflies.
Now that I’ve done some professional work, it’s fun to look back and laugh…
The books that changed the face of literature and science throughout time.
In case it wasn’t obvious from my body of written works as well as my frequent reading, I am a huge fan of science fiction. I grew up with Star Trek and Doctor Who and got wildly into The Host and Warm Bodies later on (listen, I’ll count zombie dystopia as science fiction until someone pries it from my cold, dead hands).
Really, I’ll consume as much sci-fi as you put in front of me. I adore watching what writers can do when they’re inspired by their age’s scientific discoveries, seeing what it means to push humanity to and beyond…
What life behind the screen looks like, one year on.
It’s hard to believe it’s really been a year since I started writing as a job. I’ve been telling stories forever, and when I published my novel in 2018, I never expected it to spark a full career. But here I am, in 2021, a full-time writer and the author of six published titles with more on the way.
How the hell did I get here? I’ve got to say, it isn’t easy. There’s no “you won’t even feel like it’s work!” feelings for me. Freelancing is definitely work — it’s grueling and annoying at times, and will occasionally make…
How you became the main character of fandoms.
Would it surprise you to learn that you are the main character of thousands of stories you’ll never read? That you have had countless romances, fights, deaths, and lives? It’s true; you are one of the most popular characters in the world of fandom, and it’s all because of an interesting quirk in the English language and some intrepid writers’ efforts to blur the lines between fiction and reality.
It’s called self-insert, or reader-insert, fiction, and it’s had two decades to make a name for itself in fandom spaces. But where did it come from? Why do we write it?
The Three “Persons”
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Colourpop’s newest collaboration with Nintendo is precious and I’m here for it
Coming out this Thursday is Colourpop’s latest collaboration line of makeup, this time inspired by the wildly popular Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s a cute, sparkly line that seems to be dividing opinions.
A deeper look at Star Trek’s android expressions.
In an episode of the sixth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation titled “Schisms,” Lieutenant Commander Data shows off his understanding of the human practice of poetic composition by reciting some of his own.
As a poet myself, this absolutely fascinates me. What does an android value enough to express poetically? How does he compose his works? Where does he draw inspiration and take liberties? …
How people are making amazing games in just one day
Making a game is impressive enough, but making a game in days, or even 24 hours, is mind-boggling. So much effort goes into the creation of a videogame, from concept and design to programming and troubleshooting, that compressing all of that down into such a short timeframe should be impossible, and yet, nearly every weekend, people are spinning out these fantastically fun feats.
These incredible sprints of creativity are called game jams. Originally started in 2002 by Chris Hecker and Sean Barrett, a game jam is a game-making contest that lasts between 24 and 48 hours. The name comes from…
Sherlock Holmes jumpstarts fandom, despite his creator’s wishes.
There’s some debate over what the first “official” fandom was in the modern sense of there being a community cropping up around a specific piece of media. Most people agree that the best place to start looking for the real original modern fandom is to look at the first pieces of widely published and consumed media, which were serial fiction pieces published in magazines rather than expensive-to-produce bound books. One of the first series in this format to blow up spectacularly, to the point of still being wildly popular to this day, are the original tales of Sherlock Holmes.
Cat Webling
Hello! I’m Cat, author and amateur fandom historian based out of Georgia. I write about literature, theater, gaming, and fandom. Personal work: catwebling.com.
