by ·Comments Off on The Writer’s Quest Continues

When this blog goes for any length of time without an update it’s normally because I have succumbed to my tortoise-like nature and become incredibly lazy, but this time it’s mostly because I have been incredibly busy.

What follows after the jump is a brief summary of my last five months or so, what I have learnt about myself, what I have done and what I am doing.

I am earning money as a freelance writer

If you want to employ a freelance writer, please drop me a line on davidDOTofDOThingATgmailDOTcom, replacing the capitalised DOTs and ATs with their relevant symbols.

At the moment I’m probably not quite earning enough to give up the day job, which is a shame, because I gave up the day job, but that just means I need to find another day job in the near future.

I am now (results pending) a fully qualified NCTJ journalist.

I did a full time course set by the NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists:  An acronym that I still embarrassingly enough get muddled up whenever I say it) that finished a couple of weeks ago.  I met some fantastically talented people there, some of whom will undoubtedly be the next big thing in your favourite paper, on your favourite website or your favourite news broadcast programme.  The rest are probably sick of journalism right now and will need a break because the course is rather intense, unrelenting and tends to beat the journalism into you so hard that some of it will occasionally go right through and come out the other side.

Incidentally, if anyone reading this is interested in a career in journalism, do an NCTJ.  You won’t realise how little you know until you do.  I did mine at News Associates, who have centres in London and Manchester and although they are pricey by comparison, it is the first piece of education that I have paid for that I feel I not only got a good deal but probably didn’t pay them enough for all the work they put in.

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by ·Comments Off on Defamation and Why I am now Too Scared to Post Anything

From now on, I will try to avoid just posting my lecture notes on anything I find interesting, as that would most likely be dull for everyone else and would be the very definition of quantity over quality.  Also, it would happen frequently, because I am going over a lot of (in my mind) very interesting things.

However, here is an interesting little nugget of the law concerning saying things about other people:

1) Defamation, more specifically libel, is where you say or write something that is published in some manner that damages somebody’s reputation (the actual definition is a little longer and more extensive than that, but this is the gist).

2) If this happens, a person can sue you for damages that will be decided by a jury who probably doesn’t like you and won’t be on your side (or in most cases, actively hates you).

3) Every fresh publication of this can be considered a new instance and can also be actionable.

Here’s where things get a little more scary if you are updating a blog.  In the case of internet publication, it is considered a new publication every time the piece is downloaded.

In short, if you get away with something potentially defamatory, you probably won’t get away with it for long.  Not only that, but even if you pull your piece, Google will still have it.   Google will have cached it.  Google will have downloaded it.  Google will know all about your defamation.  That’s enough.

I have been through some of my previous posts and I’m fairly certain I’m ok.  In a worst case scenario, I could use defences of “Fair Comment”, in particular with relation to being maybe a little bit rude about theatre pieces, or if I’m feeling particularly confident, “Justification”, where I would claim that what I said was true, which should never really be too hard to manage.

All the same, if you notice a drop in the number of posts, just be aware that the above is swilling around in the back of my mind.

Additional Notes:

I suppose the very worst thing you could do if you’re worried about defamation is to put a brief outline on how the law around it works up on your site.  I suppose the only thing really worse than that is to put up the contact details of a good tort lawyer.

Another reason you might notice a drop in posts is that sleep is fast becoming a luxury event up there with eating and drinking when put next to the desperate scramble to keep all the shorthand I’ve learnt in my head.

by ·Comments Off on Intelligent Tinned Ham

I have this horrible feeling that spam might be driving me to a point of paranoia where I may have unapproved a couple of legitimate comments, as some spam is getting clever and just subtle enough for me to think “maybe they did just like my article and want to say so?” despite their login name being something like FreeRegistryCleaner.  Then of course I tie myself in knots thinking that maybe they’d called themselves that to be ironic or that maybe they had the world most boring yet intriguing nickname.

If I have unapproved a comment of yours and you are a real person and not a robot (not that I’m robot-ist) then drop me a line and I’ll reinstate it.

Additional Notes:

The internet can become a paranoid place.  I started looking around on a Minecraft server last night and made the mistake of asking for building rights, which started a long “interview process” where the admin in question was definitely suspicious of me and convinced I was going to try and destroy their carefully crafted world.  I completely understand why this is the case but it is sad all the same.  Maybe there’s a broader comment about the human condition and the few making life hell for the many in there.

by ·Comments Off on The Incomplete Works

I don’t believe in New Years Resolutions.  I think they’re daft and only set you up to look stupid when you inevitably fail.  Not only that, but if something is worth doing, you might as well just do it instead of needing to tie it to some date-triggered calendar event.  Despite all of this, I do have a sort-of-resolution-of-sorts.

I have a chronic problem whereby I constantly start projects and leave them hanging.  I know that I am not alone in this, but my problem extends to the point that I get distressed about their incomplete state, procrastinate, get more stressed about it, assign some arbitrary requirement for ultimate quality on the project, panic that my work will never be good enough for it and then never progress at all.  I have one project in particular that was born out of a five minute think on the bus about what I would do if I had to do a 24 hour comic, grew from there and now sits in my “I will never be artistically good enough to tell this story” pile with everything else.

My resolution that is happening at new year but is not a new years resolution is therefore the following:

This year, I will work on at least one of my unfinished projects and see it through to either completion, or a state where if it was never continued, it wouldn’t be considered unfinished.

In order to do this I’m going to source a little help from anyone who is interested.  Over the next week or so, I will be posting information on each of my unfinished projects and samples of them and inviting any criticism or encouragement for which, if any, projects have wings and which, if any, projects should be buried.

I might not take any advice or suggestions, but I thought I might invite it, partly to see if anyone beyond a few people I know actually reads this, and if anyone out there really desperately wants comments on at all.

by ·Comments Off on Angry Marr Criticizes Bloggers

In a beautiful piece of flame-bait, the BBC’s Andrew Marr has criticized bloggers the world over, stating that they are socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother’s basements.”  He goes on to say that most bloggers are very angry people writing late at night whilst very drunk and that this will never replace journalism.

Is he right?  A little bit.  Is he wrong?  A little bit.  Is his comment a bit stupid?  A little bit.  Has he missed the point?  Probably.

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