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.