We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mary Beth Mcandrews a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mary Beth, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

As a journalist, it is really difficult to find steady work and/or a staff job that can pay the bills. I was a freelance film critic and entertainment journalist for five years before my current position at Dread Central. The freelance writer hustle is not an easy one and you need to be patient, persistent, and, above all, ready to get creative when it comes to taking assignments/contracts that offer decent pay per article, which I definitely wish I knew before getting started.

In terms of my journey, I was an English major in college and I loved to write, so when I realized that I could pitch ideas to zines and websites, I got to sending (very bad) pitches. As I progressed, I started writing for bigger and bigger places (such as Polygon, Roger Ebert, and Thrillist) and started earning money with my writing. I still worked full-time social media positions but I was able to maintain rather consistent writing work, especially after I went to grad school and earned my Master’s in 2019. I got an internship with Film School Rejects which really helped me hone my skills as I was consistently turning in weekly assignments. From there, I kept building my confidence as a writer and became a staff contributor for Slash Film. In 2021, I was lucky enough to interview for a position at Dread Central, which ended up morphing into my job now as editor-in-chief.

Mary Beth, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi! I’m Mary Beth McAndrews, editor-in-chief at Dread Central. I’m also a filmmaker! I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a tiny kid, so writing has always been a passion of mine. It’s never really felt like work but more like an extension of myself and my brain. I studied English in college and went to grad school for Film Studies, but I don’t necessarily think you need a master’s degree to be an accomplished writer. If you can write a sentence and convey your ideas clearly, then you’re well on your way.

As editor-in-chief, I’m not just writing, though. I’m managing a team of writers and editors, I’m tracking and managing our editorial budget, I’m doing ad sales outreach, and I’m just overall trying to make Dread Central the best horror entertainment website it can be. I want Dread Central to feel different than other similar brands, so one of my core focuses is to work with writers from all backgrounds so there’s a diverse range of voices and perspectives on the genre on our site. I want to foster a sense of community while also sharing horror news, reviews, interviews, and retrospectives.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Writing is a job and specifically, writing about films is a job! And it’s not just about watching movies all day and sharing a few sentences about them. Film criticism and pop culture writing is an art. From learning how to craft a good review to being able to find fresh angles about existing media properties, this is a field that requires massive creativity and quick thinking. While it’s not conflict reporting and lower stakes than political reporting, entertainment journalism is just as important, particularly in regards to understanding what society is entertained by and why. What we love to watch speaks volumes about where we’re at in culture, and journalists like myself work to analyze that and speak to why those pieces of media are so crucial.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding thing, to me, is having someone read a piece of my writing and feeling inspired/seen/understood. It’s so easy as a writer to feel like your writing is being thrown into the void of the internet and no one is actually reading any of your words. So when someone reaches out and explains how something you wrote/created spoke to them is everything to me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://mbmcandrews.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/mb.mcandrews
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mbmcandrews/
• Twitter: https://x.com/mbmcandrews