I’ve writing personal essays disguised as film reviews for a few years now, starting on Letterboxd, a platform I’ve since stopped using.

The most important of my earlier stuff is easily this ‘review’ of Dark City, the film brought back memories and moments from my teens. When I shared the piece with a friend, her positive reaction made me start writing more often. I think about her words often, it was the first time someone had ever complimented my writing.

& how did I end up here?

At the beginning of 2023 I was feeling kinda flat, the previous year hadn’t been what I wanted and the next looked the same. I was lounging around at the weekend with my girlfriend and just started writing, working on putting together some kinda narrative for the films we’d seen that week. I called it Kanes Sons [1/52], promising another each week and giving a recommendation.

When I got to around Lead Feather [12/52], I decided I wasn’t stopping at the end of the year, that [53/52] was an inevitability. After looking around for a bit, mulling names I settled on slash fifty two as a publication name and Substack as a platform. After spending a day copying everything over, a review of Automatic became my first post on Substack and We Made It Up [16/52] the first blog.

From there I started branching out a little, writing a bit about social media and some longer form stuff. I really felt I’d found a good home for my writing in Substack and the weekly format was, most of the time, easy to keep up with.

Then I got caught up in a combination of perfectionism, depression and anger at the failing British state. Trying and failing to publish anything for about three months. I came back with Crazy Golf Law [38/52], feeling a little day late-dollar-short, but back none-the-less.

Timing being timing, I discovered that two days before my return, the site admins of Substack had posted an ‘Addressing the Allegations’ style post about how they didn’t intent to do anything about Nazi’s using their website for fundraising. I quickly decided I didn’t want to be anywhere near Substack anymore, so moved over to this (wordpress.com hosted) site. It’s more customisable and I’ve got my own URL, so can abandon ship much easier if need be.

support & more robyn

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& other stuff

I write on a MacBook Air M1 using an app called uFocus, it’s got typewriting scrolling and just saves in .txt, it is all I need and perfect. I usually write on my sofa, but also like going to coffee shops and looking like a dickhead. My background is in film and TV lighting, but more recently I’ve been editing video and live streaming.