1. Actively Watch Movie – Yes, I recognize that movie watching is a passive activity. Watching a movie isn’t something you do, it is something that happens to you. However, if you want to write good reviews you have to learn to look at movies with a critical eye. This means you need to pay attention to everything and I mean Everything. Notice how actors are placed in each shot, setting, camera angles, even music. All of these elements play a role in story that is trying to be told and are important to talk about if you want to write compelling sort of reviews that your readers will stop by your site each week to read. .

2. Take Copious Notes – No, I don’t expect you to sit in a theatre with pen and pad or laptop in hand. But I do expect you to take solid mental notes. Information such as actor’s names or who director was is easy to come across, but information like camera shots, or plot devices is not, so you need to train yourself not only to watch for that type of information but also to remember it.

Odd question, I know. Voice is associated with sound not sight. Still, I’ve been looking for it everywhere: writer’s retreats, a bedroom converted into a chic writing studio, refrigerator, which is filled with brainpower snacks, specifically chocolate-mocha Haagen-Dazs (They say it cures writer’s block. I’ve dedicated years to working out correct dosage). Yet while my words arranged on paper proved that I can hold my own with a comma and I’m no slouch when wielding a semicolon, words themselves felt to me like hollow echo chambers; they ran in place bouncing off keyboard onto page but went nowhere.

Then one day last autumn, I was strolling through a street fair. I noticed two women standing behind a table display of seed packets wrapped attractively as gifts. Muse impulse or poor shopping-impulse control, it no longer matters which, prompted me to buy five of them.

So as not to feel guilty for spending $10. on seed packets that probably had a unit cost of eighty cents each, I went home and found addresses of five people I’d fallen out of touch with for several years. For each note card, I thought that I’d be clever and enclose an inquiry: “Where will love blossom next in your life?”

Several weeks passed with no acknowledgement.

Naturally, I pulled out my journal to bask in rejection. I’d show them. I’d answer this query myself and rejoice in my own smug self-satisfaction that I was a lone word warrior.

Where will love blossom next in my life? Hmm. That was a puzzler. I couldn’t work out problem-solving angle or think my way around it. The emptiness of blank page mirrored emptiness within me. It was uncomfortable like scratchy underwear. I couldn’t turn back though. I put that query out there and if I ignored it myself I couldn’t justify my ego bruise.