The Meaning of Life

I spend a lot of my time wondering if I'm really making the most of my existence. None of us know how long we've got after all. It used to really annoy me that I would spend 40 hours a week moving things around on a screen - is that really living? Surely I should be trying to take in as much of the seemingly unlimited different experiences this mind blowingly varied planet has to offer. Why am I sitting in an ugly building above Victoria station trying to find pictures that will serve to pull people into a feature about pensions? (And that brings up yet another question: should we worry about how we're going to live when we're older or focus on what we are doing in the here and now?).

*sigh*

All the navel gazing on this blog...what is the point of it all? Bear with me, I'm getting there. To reiterate some fundamentals: 1) I'm not rich, so I have to work. 2) I like writing. Writing involves a lot of sitting in front of a screen. So how could I ensure that all that time in front of the screen is at least serving some useful purpose? I'm incredibly happy and relieved to document that I got there in the end. After six years of writing and two trying to figure out career change (90% of my income comes from being a Photo Editor), I've finally got myself a job that should mean that I get to do a lot more writing. The icing on the cake is that writing (and thinking and creating) will have a useful purpose.

On 7th April I start a new job as a Content Editor at Matter&Co. They are a communications company that work with value driven organisations - social enterprises and others that put a positive social impact before profit. Matter&Co also run the social enterprise magazine Pioneers Post and I will be contributing to that too.

Although I'm naturally an optimist, there have been many low points along the way. At one point I thought, 'Fuck writing, it's got me nowhere'. When I met the man that would give me the job, he told me he'd read something I'd forgotten that I'd written on Sabotage Times. More incredible than an article about nearly having sex with three women in 24 hours helping to get me a job were the words 'I really like the way you write' in the job offer he emailed a few days later.

It might seem like it but this post is not just so I can blow my own trumpet. It took me years to figure out how I could write for a living and I tried out many different paths trying to work it out. At times I felt like giving up and putting up with the mediocre job I had. I told myself to stop whining. So if you're at that point and you're reading this, don't give up. All those words that you put out there might come back and help you one day. I'm not sure how this next part of my life will pan out but it was writing that got me there.
PS. Respect where it's due. The valuable lessons I learnt at Careershifters got me there too. I need to write about that another time.

Can I Write Content For a Living?

I know - kind of a clunky headline. The alternative was 'Here's What I've Learned About Content in the Last Couple of Months at the Telegraph' which is even worse. I'm hungover so best I can do today.

The Telegraph news room.

In November I answered a request for male writers on a Facebook group and the commissioning editor gave me the gig. The first job was writing how beards are over. For the foreign readers, about 18 months ago Brits started thinking it was cool to wear a beard. Shoreditch in London was reckoned to be the birthplace, an old term 'hipster', (last heard in the sixties) was brought out of retirement to describe these new trendies and soon hairy faces were springing up everywhere, including mine. It was good through last winter, but felt a bit out of step come the spring. The Guardian published a feature claiming we had reached 'peak beard' and the fad faded fast. You can read what I wrote here and it lead to two further commissions.

I'd obviously heard of 'content' and I knew advertisers were desperate to keep people on websites that had their logo on it but in truth, I still don't really get it. Even if someone finds a feature about beards entertaining for two minutes, are they really likely to click through and buy a £100 shaver? The conversion rate must be tiny. Anyway, judging by the size of the creative teams involved, Braun must have handed over enough wedge for it to be a successful concern for all involved. The Telegraph has been really busy in ramping up it's online content. No brainer really; if people aren't buying newspapers because they can get their news free online, that's where the advertisers are going to concentrate their efforts. All the features options on the Telegraph Braun hub are certainly like to keep readers there for a while.

I always thought that writing for a brand was selling out. Maybe it is. The truth of it is that I always like a challenge. Give me a subject and I like figuring out how I can write it, keep it entertaining and most importantly, have the commissioning editor come back to me with more paid work. And if you want to make a living out of words, you have to go where the money is. It certainly helped pay for Christmas. 

You should be reading the Telegraph Magazine

I've long been an admirer of the magazine that comes with the Saturday edition of the Daily Telegraph. If you're interested in writing features, you should really be reading it. They generally have five or six long form essays covering wildly varying subjects and the design is really smart - uncomplicated, easy to navigate and allowing a respectful amount of space to photography that deserves it. It's £2 for the paper on a Saturday and that is a small amount of money to pay for a very good magazine. My Dad switched me onto it. He keeps it in a very undignified place: the smallest room in the house.

Pretty well thumbed I know.

It has a good hit rate of keeping me glued as the mix of features is usually interesting. This week there was an interesting encounter with the actor Benedict Cumberbatch with simple but striking pictures by Platon. The written portrait served up by Mick Brown was just as insightful. A feature on the human rights abuses being committed by Bahrain was also thought provoking. The Bahrain government has strong ties with the US and Britain and it seems no one wants to talk about the terrible injustices that are going on there. The story of @maryamalkhawaja, a 27 year old who continues to protest against the abuses being committed there and someone who had to see her father emaciated by beatings and hunger strikes, is nothing short of amazing. Lastly there is a story about HenPower, an organisation that gets older people to look after chickens to combat loneliness and depression. That's the kind of sentence to a commissioning editor that couldn't fail to result in a commission.

You can find all these things online but they are not grouped together as they are in the magazine. Plus, buying the print edition will keep journalists in jobs. You know what to do.

The Buzz of a Byline

I still get it. I've had quite a few now but every time I see my name in print, I still get a little tingle of excitement. Nothing kills the buzz quite so effectively as the title in question spelling my name wrong though. Why is that? Obviously, a little bit about ego. I want people to chance upon that article and see that I wrote it. I want them to be impressed that I got a pitch accepted, that the Sunday Times Travel Magazine thought I was good enough to write for them. I want to feel validated as a writer! So many pitches have been turned down; at least let me savour the sporadic victories.

Bloody inaccurate sub editors

More than that though, it's all the bloody work I put in. Ok, a travel writing gig seems like a pretty good one to have. And they can be - I've written before about the wonderful experiences you can have that are beyond your salary scale when you're writing.

This particular feature was a long and drawn out process. I initially pitched in September 2012. Once accepted, I enlisted help from PRs and local tourism organisations. That went pretty well - a couple of hotels were promised and they also provided a car. I took the trip early in June 2013 and spent a hectic week trying to experience as many hotels, restaurants and things to do as Rhodes had to offer. The feature was submitted soon after and for quite a long time, I thought it had been spiked as the features editor could not confirm when it would appear. Then, at the beginning of July, I got an email to say it was going to make the October issue but that the format had changed a little and could I do some rewrites?

Even with the misspelling, it's all still worth it. When I was in Rhodes and met people, they would ask me what I did. I would say 'I'm a writer. I'm over here writing a piece on Rhodes for the Sunday Times Travel Magazine.' And that felt pretty good.

Do like Leonard Does

I've just been reading the ever excellent Brain Pickings, in particular how Leonard Cohen is firmly on the side of the perspiration fence when it comes to that famous quote by Edison. Cohen basically plays the numbers game. He writes 'all the time' and eventually he'll find a song he can work with. He also has an interesting take on employment, something that has taken up a significant portion of my daily thinking time since the beginning of last year, and given the title of this blog, one of the prime concerns of all these words. Here's Len on employment;

"Leonard Cohen 2187-edited" by Rama. From Wikipedia.

'But I think unemployment is the great affliction of man. Even people with jobs are unemployed. In fact, most people with jobs are unemployed. I can say, happily and gratefully, that I am fully employed. Maybe all hard work means is fully employed.'

What it actually means Leonard is one of a few things (I looked it up in the dictionary). It can be the state of having paid work, but what he means in this instance is a person's trade or profession. What is Leonard Cohen? He's a songwriter. That's the thing he does with his time, the thing he's chosen to do. Maria Popova, who writes Brain Pickings, calls it an existential imperative. I feel a bit like that about writing. I feel like I have to do it, but sometimes I just turn away from it because I can't be bothered. Then I feel guilty about not doing it. Partly because I think Cohen is right - do it every day and something good might come out of one of those days.

The story behind my latest bit of writing will need another blog post, but for now here it is. It's completely unrelated to Leonard Cohen and writing, it's about the NHS and social enterprises.

Help Me!

With all the many and various distractions that the internet throws up, you can sure find yourself reading a lot of shit you didn't even know that you were interested in. That's basically the whole ethos behind Sabotage Times. As they say themselves 'We can't concentrate, so why should you?' If there is a silver lining to the problem of internet distraction, it's that the really good ideas stand out. Credit where it's due then, to Marianne Power. 

Marianne writes a blog called Help Me! in which she explores the world of self help books. Like all the best ideas, this one seems so obvious it's amazing that no one had thought to do it previously. Self help books are right for close scrutiny if only because, if you were being a bit mean (I am: I've got a hangover) they profit from the anxious and desperate. 

Anyway, if nothing else, she's certainly having a lot of adventures. And if you're interested in writing (which is, I presume, why you're here), there's a really interesting post about turning down a book deal here.

I'm Writing for a Living*

...sort of.  An opportunity came up to write about music via the day job.  That I can do.  I can remember lines from songs that I've never bought such as 'You can suntan', one of the finest rhyming couplets ever.  (It's from Club Tropicana by Wham!)  I can remember stupid trivia about songs like the fact that it's Chaka Khan wailing away in the back of Steve Winwood's 'Higher Love'.  (Why would you put Chaka in the background?  That's gotta be one of the greatest hires ever.)  Ask me what I was doing this time last week, or the date of my sister in law's birthday or anything remotely important and I can't remember it.  I don't understand the way my brain works.

Click on this picture to enlarge it.

My only conclusion is that music is important to me.  We have 6Music on all day at work and I'm lucky enough to work with two blokes who are roughly my age with all the same cultural reference points.  We know that Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' is one of the greatest records ever made and that it probably invented house music but we equally love 'The Forest' by The Cure and newish things like Jagwar Ma.  We try and guess the year that certain things came out and we speculate endlessly what song titles might be when we can't exactly place them.

People always ask me why I don't write anything for the Mail (where I work).  Until now my answer was that I could never think of anything they'd like.  I couldn't think of any food stories such as 'Yellow Fruit Gives You Cancer/Is a Superfood'.  I couldn't think of any MPs or celebrities that I wanted to have a go at because they held opposing views to my own.  I also quite like the BBC.  Writing the Top of the Pops pages for Mail Plus sort of fell in my lap.  The former scribe wanted more money (and now I'm doing it, I can see why) and the powers that be weren't up for that.   I thought I could do it and I sit next to the person who commissions it.  I did a writing test, they liked it, bingo.
* The money I get for this is about 10% of my salary so writing's not paying for everything just yet.

Don't Write For A Living

Do it for the hell of it.  Because it's cathartic.  Because you feel better after you do it.  Because you enjoy the act of creation.   Because you like the feel of your fingers on the keys and the rattling sound touch typing makes.   Because these words appearing on the screen as you think them feels kind of magical (that's if you're a touch typist).  But don't listen to me, listen to William Faulkner.  He advised writing 'not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before.'  I discovered this quote by way of Brain Pickings and if you're not switched onto this already, you should be.  Lots of sustenance for that disgusting slimy grey organ inside your head.  You can find it here.  I also found this video, which has more great advice about writing for the sake of it. by Time Magazine's favourite author of last year, John Green.

I've been doing some writing for the sake of it recently.  I figured if I wasn't going to get paid for it, I might as well have it doing some good.  What happened is that writing ended up giving me another new experience.   This happens a lot through writing.  If it hadn't started writing, I might not have ended up going up in a microlight over Victoria Falls or interviewing a Lord of the Rings fan that had raised enough money through crowd funding to make her own hour long version.  Anyhow, Broadway is a charity that helps the homeless near where I live.  I get to interview some of their clients, put it together as a feature and they use those stories to market the charity to potential donors and increase their visibility by placing them in the media.   Needless to say, it's pretty humbling to meet some of these people.  It also brought some much needed perspective into my life when I was busy moaning about London being expensive and getting bored of my day job.   As my Mum used to say, there's always someone worse off than yourself.

Huffington Post bans 'Black Hatting'?

Following my post about making money out of One Direction, I got a few more commissions from clients eager to see their own websites plugged on Huffington Post.   One guy even sent me some suggestions of how to write it as the subject matter was so boring I couldn't think how to make it interesting.  As I wrote in that last piece, I thought this was a way that everyone could benefit from an idea like HuffPost.  They still get their content free, the client gets some exposure and, most importantly in the internet age of everyone expecting to get stuff for free, the writer gets paid.

Except HuffPost spotted I was posting paid for features and sent me an email telling me to pack it in.
Here's the relevant part of the T and C's:

• Disclosure: In an effort to be as transparent with our readers as possible, HuffPost bloggers should disclose any financial conflicts of interest related to the issue they are writing about. If a blogger receives payment or income from a company, organization, group, or individual with a financial stake in the issue he/she is weighing in on, that information should be disclosed at the bottom of the applicable blog post.

Black Hatters load the deck

So that's the end of that.  I was also warned against something called 'Black Hatting' by a savvy tech writer I know.   As I understand it from surfing a few Google results, black hatting is a way of rigging content with keywords that link to a certain web page.  There's a famous example of the words 'black dress' on a site about nuclear engineering linking to the US department store JC Penney.  Essentially this fucks with Google's algorithms and loads search engine results in favour of the business that is paying to have these links in place.  Google doesn't like that and it seems, Huffington Post doesn't either.

I wasn't sure I was black hatting - I thought the context was relevant.  Say to someone, 'You should read this article about insurance, it's really interesting' is a sure fire way to turn them off the idea.  But if you say 'Just read this amazing story of a downhill skier who totally wrecked her knee two years ago but is favourite for the gold medal at Sochi', you're likely to have hooked their interest.   That feature might well mention an insurance company that got the best doctors involved and paid for the best care so they'll get a discreet plug.

So how do you know if you're black hatting?  When writing content, it's all about context.  People reading about nuclear engineering probably aren't there to buy dresses from a department store.   Are people who are reading about a skiing accident thinking about insurance though?  I think it's just about relevant, but I'm not sure.  If anyone can offer a guide, I'd love to see it.

Reinvent Yourself!

I don't usually just post links but I wanted to get this out there before I forgot.  So easy to do in this age of a million and one things on the internet that will distract you.  It's not only a great bit of writing (succinct, witty, honest) but also sage advice.   It might give you a clue what has been on my mind a lot lately. Ladies and Gentleman, I give you James Altucher's Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Reinventing Yourself.

The Importance of Encouragement

Following my 'I'm over it' post a few weeks back, I got an encouraging email from someone I used to write for before he moved jobs, telling me he steers a lot of the interns towards it for 'it's candid insight'.    It gave me a bit of a boost, so thanks Duncan.  If you're an intern and you're reading this, hope you find something worth reading.  Also, if you know someone whose writing you enjoy, let them know.  They might really need to hear it.

What I've remembered since that miserable post is why I started writing in the first place: it's because I really like doing it.  A restaurant review I wrote some time ago has just been posted by the Editor and I'm really happy with it - I think it's a good bit of writing.  To the Americans reading this, us Brits are not good at blowing our own trumpet, so enjoy this rarity.  Click HERE to read the post.

The other thing that happened after I'd written that post is that I got another enquiry about producing some more content.  Funny how the work comes to you just when you're starting to lose hope.  

Rant!

I often find a good rant helps.  On receiving yet another letter from 'Odey Wealth' asking me to join their wealth management service which is 'open to clients who have investible assets of £500,000 or more', I thought I would do the decent thing and write back.

Hello Crispin

You recently sent me a letter, even though I have no idea how you got my name and address.  

I have about £6000 to invest and I'm trying to save towards a mortgage.  When you've finished helping rich people get even richer, why not spare a thought for those less well off and give me a call with some suggestions of how to turn the £6K into £25K quicksmart?  I might be able to get a two bedroom flat in the outer limits of a city that is rapidly becoming segregated then.  

Alas, soon only the likes of you and your peers will be able to afford to live here.  As I'm sure you won't want to lose the cultural diversity that is attracting wealthy clients of yours to the city of London, be sure to give me a ring.  If you don't, it'll only turn into a city of bored rich people trying to outdo each other with increasingly ludicrous reconstructions of their already massively over priced homes.  Either that or they'll be scratching their bonces trying to figure new ways of pimping their Evoques.

Failing that, please take me off your mailing list.

Toodle pip.

Lee Mannion

I answered my question

When I first started this blog, the question stood as a challenge to myself - could I do it?  Could I make a living out of the only thing I had a true passion for?  Back then I loved writing, had just received a big enough redundancy payout to ensure that I wouldn't have to work for six months or maybe more and I think I'd been reading a lot about successful people who had followed their passions.  I was enthusiastic.  The money I had in the bank is not to be underestimated - that money bought me freedom.  It meant I didn't have to earn any money to survive in an expensive city that is full of temptations.  That was four years ago.  I found the answer to my question.  My answer is no.

In 2009 I was idealistic.  I would have lots of brilliant ideas and commissioning editors would pay me to write for them once they'd read my pitch.  Other editors would notice me, admire my writing and then they would ask me to write for them.  For money!  (That did actually happen once and there have been very few things in my life that have made me as happy).  I was looking at people like Grace Dent, who seemed to have come out of nowhere to be popular with editors and successful and I thought 'I could do that, be witty, gobby and endearing.'  The truth was I just didn't know enough about Grace Dent.  She has worked her arse off to get where she is, working at magazines since she bounced out of University and writing 11 (11!) novels for teenagers along the way.  We're roughly the same age, but she's been incomparably more prolific.

If this blog has any advice to offer, it's this - you have to, like Grace Dent, work your arse off if you really want it.  Sure, there is a certain section of the media who were privately educated and used those connections to wangle a sweet position.  But most of the ones who are really good, the ones who make you laugh or gasp at their intellect, they're the ones who have been at it for years, honing their craft.  My lack of success leads me to conclude that I'm too lazy and that I don't want it enough.  This is depressing, because it leaves a big hole in my life - what else do I want to do?  As of this moment in time, I don't really have a clue.  I'm trying to expose myself to new experiences, going to meet ups and lectures about different kinds of work, waiting, like a moth, to be drawn to a flame.

It might be a hippie cliche but for me, it's true: life is a journey.  Can I Write For A Living?  was one for me and I'm now embarking on the next one.  I'd like think there are a few valuable insights in all of the different posts; I'd like to think it hasn't all been a waste of time.  So few things these days seem to have value, to be worthy.  There has been such a big gap between this post and the last and I'm not sure that I'll write here much anymore.  Neither do I want to end it.  I feel like a band who don't want to play together anymore but might get back together in a few years time, remember that it was fun and go out on the road again.  So, for those of you who have taken the time to read, thank you.  I hope you enjoyed it.  But I'm not sure I have anything more to say.

The Secret of Success

I've only just realised that I'm interested in achievers.  I'm interested because I haven't achieved myself, because I'd like to and I want to know how it's done.  There's a huge market for it of course - every notable CEO of every successful company has probably put a book out describing how to get there at some point. Given that there are a lot of readers coming to this site from outside of the UK, I should explain who Arabella Weir is.

'The Fast Show' was a very successful and much loved half hour comedy show performed by six people on the television channel BBC2.  Arabella Weir was one of those six.  She went on to write a couple of books and now describes herself as a comedy writer and performer.  Arabella puts her success down to one thing: determination.  She has a lot of interesting knowledge to impart about the insecurities and doubts that crop up along the way and she's my latest Pass Me On.  You can get the inside story by clicking here.

How to Find an Angle on a Story

Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West

Following on from the last post, I got another commission this week from the same client.  I've never cared for musicals, but I like the Wizard of Oz (who doesn't?) and was interested to discover that Wicked the musical takes the focus away from Dorothy and onto the witches.  Because I've been looking for a new job recently, I've been trying to figure out what my passions are.  This is tricky to narrow down because I enjoy almost everything except heights...mostly I just like having new experiences.

The point of me telling you this is that finding an angle on a story is essentially finding something related to a subject that you like or are interested in.  An inquisitive writer should be able to do that about any given subject.  A writer who earns a decent wage is certainly someone who has to have that skill.  If you can't find any interest in the subject, don't take the commission.  Life's too short to write about something that bores you.  Given that Wicked is looking at the Oz story from another perspective, I admired the imagination.  Certainly I admired the sustained success of it - people are still snapping up tickets to see it nearly 10 years after the Broadway debut.  If only I'd written it!  If you're interested on the angle I took, you can read what I came up with here.

How One Direction made me $250

...in which I sell out.

Are you on LinkedIn?  You should be.  If I hadn't been on there I wouldn't have made $250 writing about One Direction.  There are numerous writers groups you can join on there (Content Writers and the Freelance Writers Connection spring to mind) but be warned: there is a lot of crap to sift through.  A lot of the content writers stuff, for example, is people wanting hundreds of words for $10.  Put another way, it's a total rip off and further proof that a flooded labour market (lots of people want to write) makes labour cheap for the bosses.  The exception to this is if you live in a country where ten bucks goes further than for most of us in the Western world - you'll see a lot of posts for content from India for example.

One Direction after reading my feature on them.

Another hazard is bullshit scams and I was half expecting that when I replied to a post from someone called Jennifer (whose profile picture looked suspiciously like a stock shot) wanting freelance writers to get in touch for work.  My advantage was that I had written for Huffington Post.  Once they have accepted a pitch you get a login to submit further articles and I guess if you've written for them once, you're more likely to get published again.  Huff Post don't pay for your submissions, so they probably just enjoy getting the free content.  Writing about 1D was the challenge though - I couldn't (and still can't) name you one of their songs.  But people who make a living out of writing usually have to produce articles to order, possibly on subjects they know little about.  I was interested in the challenge - could I do it and still make it interesting?  You can read the article and decide for yourself here (and please share the story with the buttons top left of that page if you like it).

Jennifer wasn't a scam.  She even paid up front to convince me that she was genuine, though has since asked me to 'reconsider' my fee should we work together again.  I feel like Huffington Post should be paying for content (they're making money from the ads after all) and I believe that they do, if you're a celebrity writer.  So it struck me that this was a way everyone wins.  HuffPost gets content, Jennifer gets some traffic for her site and the writer gets paid.   Could be the future, no?

Reasons to Write No. 4: New Experiences

The Westway Sports Centre

When you write you get to do things you might not have considered.  One such example is my most recent post for West London Living.  Never been turned on by climbing, mainly because I'm scared of heights.  Come to think about it, it might well be a good way to get over that fear.  Bouldering means you don't have to get too far off the ground though.  There were other bouldering virgins when I went to experience the class, so I wasn't too bothered if I cocked it up.  I can think of another good reason to do it too.  If you've always wanted strong muscly arms, I reckon you'd get them after a few sessions on the climbing wall.  Mine have always looked like cheese straws.  If only there was a way to get great arms by keyboard bashing.

Writing this feature also opened up a bit of my community for me.  It's been a long winter in England (I write that because I've noticed a lot of you are reading from other countries) and Christmas left me skint, so I hadn't been out much.  My drug of choice is TV and it's lethal to me.  Whole evenings can pass when I haven't thought about what else I could do with my life or how I could use that time to learn something.  Unlike my living room, the local recreation centre was swarming with people.  There were several six a side football matches going on outside, about the same number of tennis matches happening in the warm and who knows how many exercise classes taking place around the enormous space under the Westway (a kind of freeway for those of you reading from the US).  It felt like a party was going on that I'd never previously been invited to.  So that's where everyone was.  So even though I wasn't getting paid, I saw a side of London I'd never seen before. 

Free Cocktails!

(Or Reason Number 3 to Write)

This is by way of checking in, as I haven't posted for a while.  So much for doing it every Sunday.  My latest review for West London Living involved me going to a 'speakeasy'.  (London's got a bit of a thing for supposedly hidden bars at the moment.)  Three years ago, when I started this business of doing some writing for people, I didn't think it would lead to drinking for free and becoming a reviewer.  So, if you're still looking for reasons to start writing and start approaching people, what are you waiting for?  It might lead to Club Tropicana (drinks are free).

Pass Me On: David Arnold

It took a while to get to David Arnold.  When I started Pass Me On it was a response, in part, to putting in requests to PRs and then them humming and hahing before deciding that because I wasn’t GQ there was no chance.  ‘Fuck you PRs’ I thought.  I’ll do it on my own by getting personal introductions to people, thus eliminating the middle man, ie you.  Without the help of a PR, it’s been so much easier.  It only took me four months to pin down David Arnold for an interview.  Sure there was this little project he had going on, something about closing ceremonies for the Olympics and Paralympics.  He had to get them out of the way first.  Oh sure, I thought, we’ve all got work to do right?  He’ll be able to find 15 minutes to talk to me.  We all say we’re busy don’t we?

I've changed the format of Pass Me On this time around.  The interviews always ended up being longer than 15 minutes and a friend advised that the Q&A format of the writing wasn't a great showcase for my feature writing skills.  Q&A was initially attractive because I liked the raw, uncensored nature of it.  When you read an interview in a magazine, to a certain extent you're being advised on what the interviewee is like because of the impression the interviewer is getting.  With Q&A the reader can make their own mind up.  The flip side of that is, although eavesdropping can be fun sometimes if the conversation is juicy enough, it can get boring if you're not interested in what those two people are talking about.  When you lay it out like a feature, you're trying to find things in the transcript that are interesting to everyone.  Make your own minds up about whether I was successful here.

Public Relations

A PR, yesterday.

Once upon a time I used to work for a lads magazine (for foreign readers - a men's lifestyle magazine mostly featuring half naked women) and there was an oft heard phrase in the office: 'PR lies'.  This meant a PR promising something that they never delivered.  Journalists are of course spoilt in many ways; invitations to free film screenings, bar openings (with free booze) and unbelievably one summer, the free use of an apartment in Ibiza for the duration of the party season.  But interviews with big name stars and press trips to exciting countries were often dangled carrots that we never got to get our teeth into.  Cue big gaping holes on the flat-plan of the magazine that needed to be filled and much gnashing of teeth.  PR lies.  Damn them for not following through on their promises.

Now I've grown up a bit, I'm much more sympathetic to their usefulness.  Travel PRs in particular endure a nerve wracking process to deliver press exposure for their clients.  They have to engage the interests of writers, writers have to pitch successfully to commissioning editors and even if that goes well, the story might get killed before it see print or web space.  For my own part, I misguidedly thought that circumnavigating PRs in order to continue Pass Me On would be a good idea.  They wouldn't think much of a blog anyway (nothing in it for them unless the blog has gazillions of readers) and particularly for certain representatives, they'd be getting requests for interviews from celebrities all the time.   Why would they bother with me? This is only partly true for Pass Me On.  Though I request direct contact details for each successive interviewee, Norman Jay came via a PR.  I can only put this down to lucking out with a lovely person (Roberta at Dusted) respecting a good idea when they see one.

Post Matt Berry, I've been chasing the next link in the chain for what feels like months now.  Person X was pretty busy all through the Olympic period and I was happy to wait, but there's been no contact for weeks now.  Fair enough if he's no longer interested, I just need to know.  Which makes me think that PRs are a good idea.  You get a straight answer and if it's in the positive, a time and a date.  Everyone knows where they stand.  So this blog is by way of a confession box asking for forgiveness for my past sin of slagging PRs.  They certainly have their uses.  Now I just have to find out who represents X.