Walking, scribing and writing

This lady isn't me by the way. I just liked the picture.

It's been a busy few weeks, hence my absence from the blog...

Earlier today I posted a Q&A interview over on The F-Word that one of my writers, Victoria Bailey, had done with the incendiary spoken word poet Toria Garbutt. 

This was an interesting piece to edit in a number of ways. I don't know a lot about the spoken word scene and, technically, it wasn't really my section of the site. But then, as with things like fanzines and podcasts, it wasn't really anyone else's section either. Victoria is one of my writers and I'd commissioned her to do the piece so I made it my responsibility.

It's great when you get a piece back and it's brilliant. Not only because it makes the editing so much easier, but also because it means you're really excited about putting it up on the site and having people read it. And you totally should read it, because it's a great piece.

This evening I finished writing up and formatting my own interview with Amanda Palmer for Louder Than War. I'd taken on this commission because it was offered to me by Melanie Smith at LTW and I like the Dresden Dolls and also Amanda's solo work, most of which I was introduced to by my friend Jane Appleby. It's been six years since the last Amanda Palmer album, but last year she collaborated with the Welsh singer/songwriter Jasmine Power on the song 'Mr Weinstein will see you now', a track which features in this months F-Word playlist.

I'm happy to report that I really enjoyed talking to Amanda Palmer, and hopefully that comes across in the finished interview. There will be a review of the album to follow in the next couple of days, but it's progress has been slowed by the temp work I've been doing this past week, and will continue to do until Wednesday afternoon.

Why the temp work? Well, because full time freelancing is not paying the bills.

This isn't a surprise to me to be honest, and I had a whole list of strategies when I went full time freelance as to how I was going to tease out my meagre writing earnings. I got a lot of my advice from the start up/freelance community on Medium which, in retrospect, perhaps wasn't the best place to start. I'm getting better advice from the freelance journalism community these days, including amazing women like Lucy O'Brien, Anna Codrea-Rado, Sian Meades, and Robyn Vinter. All of whom will probably never know the extent to which they have helped this self taught music writer these past few months.

Funnily enough, I've had more luck (or near misses...) with the writing opportunities than I have with things like proofreading, copywriting, copyediting and so on. And, as such, I decided to return to something I knew a bit about and knew I could do: Ad hoc temping and casual work.

Over the years I've been a Casual Library Assistant, including doing the book equivalent of supermarket checkout work at the School Library Service for a few weeks in 2005, I've done Clearing work for one of the local universities, I've done two types of Election work, I've hammered online surveys... And, now, I've been a scribe for SEN kids for their mock GCSE's over in Gorton.

Taking a week out to do the scribing has eaten into my journalism time, naturally, and I have been very knackered thanks to the 45 minute walk each way to work, but at least it's bringing in some money and the staff and the kids are nice.

Once the scribing is over, I have another piece to write for Four Goods, but I'm keeping that one largely under wraps at the moment as it's still very much a work in progress.

One thing I do want to do is go back to writing on here more regularly again, as the blog is one of my most enjoyable writing outlets. I also have some other plans I'm hoping to put in place in the next couple of months, but they're still at the planning stage.

There will be more soon.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash