Like any indy author or raging narcissist (the two are often combined) I'm continually looking for something, anything that will get the stuff I write some exposure. It's a long game, gradually building up an online 'footprint', a few blog posts here, a URL link there. In the long run, you tell yourself, it'll pay off. So! To the local newspaper, then!
I used to have an article from the Spalding Guardian pinned to my wall as a lesson in journalistic style. It was entitled something like "Woman Watches in Horror as Dog Savages Duck". It concerned a woman who watched, horrified, as a big lurcher across the road pounced on, and slew, the "hapless duck". Much ink was shed on the callous behaviour of the dog owner, who laughed at the fowl's doom, and the piteous condition of the duck, who was "minding its own business" at the time.
Now, I know the dog owner. He's a lovely fellow and his lurchers were very well trained. The duck was sickly and the lurcher killed it cleanly and (context) Spalding is replete with ducks. Point is: "Dog Kills Duck" is the sort of story you only find in the local journo rags of small market towns.
Despite misgivings, I contact the Guardian and speak to a feature editor (the feature editor? I struggle to think there's more than one) whose name I will cleverly disguise as Blodge. Ms Blodge tells me that only recently the Guardian did a piece on a local woman who wrote a book and self-published it, like me. Yes, apparently I'm not the only Spaldonian with a burning story to tell or a GCSE in English Language. Ms Blodge advises me to be hopeful: "so long as you have new experiences to talk about then I'm sure it could be interesting to readers."
Now I know Spalding Guardian readers hang on every word in their dear journal and are quick to mutiny if stories are recycled. Unless they're stories about biting dogs, fights outside kebab shops, kids being expelled from schools or someone shaving their head for charity. Or anything to do with local football teams winning, losing or drawing. Yes, when I look at it that way, I'm inclined to doubt that novelty is high on the wishlist for the Guardian's discerning readership.
Nevertheless, play the game, play the game. I make a number of witty and astute observations (* it's my blog so they're witty and astute if I say they are) about traditional publishing, digital publishing and the online experience of marketing. The story, I'm saying here, is the journey - I'm on a Journey. I don't actually say that, but it's implied and anyway, Blodge is a journalist, so she can sniff a Journey-story link a drunk sniffs a curry.
"I'm not sure your publishing story is very different to the last one I wrote," Blodge replies. Doubtless it's true. It's the essence of great journalism that is extracts human universals from the humdrum details of life. "Local Person Writes Book" is a headline that, once written, bears no further embellishment. Why repeat it, even if a hundred local authors poured forth in a frenzy of creativity?
"Perhaps your own life story is interesting - is it?" Blodge adds, relentlessly.
Is it? Is it? You see, that's why I stopped smoking pot. Questions like that, right there. Is my life story perhaps interesting? Is there anything interesting about me? About me, personally? Anything at all?
Marijuana Paranoia aside, I know what Ms Blodge means. She means: "You wouldn't by any chance be on an iron lung would you? Or blind? Or a drug fiend or someone kicked out of school for being dyslexic? You wouldn't be an illegal immigrant would you? Or writing a story about your bereavement or your time in maximum security? You wouldn't perhaps be a local MP or a tramp or 13 year old child prodigy or all of the above?"
I'm tempted to reply: "I'm a borderline alcoholic, is that any good?" but I restrain myself. "Dignity," as Don Lockwood says, "Always Dignity."
I take my leave of Ms Blodge at this point, painful thought it is to lose a charming correspondent. I struggle manfully with the urge to say something catty. I heroically repress it. Then I say something catty anyway.
"So 'Local Man Grows Enormous Marrow' is news but 'Local Man Writes Book' isn't?"
OK, that's not exactly going to keep her awake at night. Not exactly Churchill to Nancy Astor, is it? Not quite Liam Gallagher on Gary Barlow. Still, not to worry. I have a large glass of wine (remember the borderline alcoholism?) and laugh the whole thing off. Dumbass Spalding Guardian, I say, and y'know, I'm probably right.
But my faith in human nature takes another ::dink::. I miss the old local newspaper, with its stories about dogs biting ducks and old men being arrested for being drunk in charge of a lawnmower. Look at the Guardian website now and you've got a bloke hitting a lad with a tree branch while he was walking his dog (again with the dogs!) and a plan to roll out fabric recycling to 5000 homes. I can see how readers would be gripped by the originality of these developments. The crime story is a staple, but the rest is just relentless provincial tedium.
Now that I look closely, the report says the fellow who hit the boy is "a black male".
Now I get local journalism.
I used to have an article from the Spalding Guardian pinned to my wall as a lesson in journalistic style. It was entitled something like "Woman Watches in Horror as Dog Savages Duck". It concerned a woman who watched, horrified, as a big lurcher across the road pounced on, and slew, the "hapless duck". Much ink was shed on the callous behaviour of the dog owner, who laughed at the fowl's doom, and the piteous condition of the duck, who was "minding its own business" at the time.
Now, I know the dog owner. He's a lovely fellow and his lurchers were very well trained. The duck was sickly and the lurcher killed it cleanly and (context) Spalding is replete with ducks. Point is: "Dog Kills Duck" is the sort of story you only find in the local journo rags of small market towns.
Despite misgivings, I contact the Guardian and speak to a feature editor (the feature editor? I struggle to think there's more than one) whose name I will cleverly disguise as Blodge. Ms Blodge tells me that only recently the Guardian did a piece on a local woman who wrote a book and self-published it, like me. Yes, apparently I'm not the only Spaldonian with a burning story to tell or a GCSE in English Language. Ms Blodge advises me to be hopeful: "so long as you have new experiences to talk about then I'm sure it could be interesting to readers."
Now I know Spalding Guardian readers hang on every word in their dear journal and are quick to mutiny if stories are recycled. Unless they're stories about biting dogs, fights outside kebab shops, kids being expelled from schools or someone shaving their head for charity. Or anything to do with local football teams winning, losing or drawing. Yes, when I look at it that way, I'm inclined to doubt that novelty is high on the wishlist for the Guardian's discerning readership.
Nevertheless, play the game, play the game. I make a number of witty and astute observations (* it's my blog so they're witty and astute if I say they are) about traditional publishing, digital publishing and the online experience of marketing. The story, I'm saying here, is the journey - I'm on a Journey. I don't actually say that, but it's implied and anyway, Blodge is a journalist, so she can sniff a Journey-story link a drunk sniffs a curry.
"I'm not sure your publishing story is very different to the last one I wrote," Blodge replies. Doubtless it's true. It's the essence of great journalism that is extracts human universals from the humdrum details of life. "Local Person Writes Book" is a headline that, once written, bears no further embellishment. Why repeat it, even if a hundred local authors poured forth in a frenzy of creativity?
"Perhaps your own life story is interesting - is it?" Blodge adds, relentlessly.
Is it? Is it? You see, that's why I stopped smoking pot. Questions like that, right there. Is my life story perhaps interesting? Is there anything interesting about me? About me, personally? Anything at all?
Marijuana Paranoia aside, I know what Ms Blodge means. She means: "You wouldn't by any chance be on an iron lung would you? Or blind? Or a drug fiend or someone kicked out of school for being dyslexic? You wouldn't be an illegal immigrant would you? Or writing a story about your bereavement or your time in maximum security? You wouldn't perhaps be a local MP or a tramp or 13 year old child prodigy or all of the above?"
I'm tempted to reply: "I'm a borderline alcoholic, is that any good?" but I restrain myself. "Dignity," as Don Lockwood says, "Always Dignity."
I take my leave of Ms Blodge at this point, painful thought it is to lose a charming correspondent. I struggle manfully with the urge to say something catty. I heroically repress it. Then I say something catty anyway.
"So 'Local Man Grows Enormous Marrow' is news but 'Local Man Writes Book' isn't?"
OK, that's not exactly going to keep her awake at night. Not exactly Churchill to Nancy Astor, is it? Not quite Liam Gallagher on Gary Barlow. Still, not to worry. I have a large glass of wine (remember the borderline alcoholism?) and laugh the whole thing off. Dumbass Spalding Guardian, I say, and y'know, I'm probably right.
But my faith in human nature takes another ::dink::. I miss the old local newspaper, with its stories about dogs biting ducks and old men being arrested for being drunk in charge of a lawnmower. Look at the Guardian website now and you've got a bloke hitting a lad with a tree branch while he was walking his dog (again with the dogs!) and a plan to roll out fabric recycling to 5000 homes. I can see how readers would be gripped by the originality of these developments. The crime story is a staple, but the rest is just relentless provincial tedium.
Now that I look closely, the report says the fellow who hit the boy is "a black male".
Now I get local journalism.