On Recaps
Look, I know recaps are “as ephemeral as a fart,” as Hank Stuever put it today on Facebook, and that Choire hates them, and that they’re traffic bait, and whatnot. But they’re not just a way for freelancers to get $100 and some legit clips. They’re a way to build a critical writing style! It is hard to find a way to get paid to write criticism, much less criticism that (as TV recaps do) has a built-in audience who will read you carefully and yell at you when you screw up.
My first extended writing gig was also my first chance to write critically in any context other than an unread personal blog and emails to my friends. I recapped the first half of the first season of “Lost” for Television Without Pity (whose recaps, back in the day, were a whole different species than what we talk about as recaps today).
Yes, writing those recaps was an exercise in wheezing on for ten pages about a single hour of TV. Yes, I was paid poorly (though pretty well, by today’s standards). Yes, I mostly made jokes.
But it also forced me to make critical evaluations on the fly and put them into print. It forced me to think hard about the creation of a work of pop (or art!) and talk about it. And it forced me to develop a writing style that would evolve but not change substantially over the years, as I started getting paid to write reviews of plays, movies, and books. It was a pretty invaluable experience.
