Age is a sensitive issue. From childhood, we are taught that there can be no more heinous insult than to enquire as to a stranger’s vintage. I never really understood why until now.
Despite my youth, given the choice between a student debt-clearing windfall or three years wiped off my passport, I would choose the latter without a blink. Because there is nothing more depressing than awaiting the arrival of another birthday without feeling that you’ve achieved anything to merit celebration, and in the bleak knowledge that you’re another year closer to expiring. And when said achievement is largely dependent on the procurement of a job, or at the very least, sufficient work to keep financially afloat, it’s fairly tempting to climb under the covers with a tub of (cheap) ice cream and eat your way into chilly depression as your pride wrestles with the desire to call Mum and tell her to ‘come get you’.
Yes kids, this is what happens to optimism when you enter the world of freelance journalism.
Perhaps I sound unduly pessimistic. I only graduated in July. However, let us consider the landscape: I took a gap year. I also took a break for personal reasons after university [read: I went home for a few months, confronted a less than savoury family situation, ate an obscene quantity of chocolate, found that didn’t help, and so moved to London]. BUT there are people more organised than me who didn’t take gap years, jumped on the application wagon during their third year, and are now, at the age of 21, sitting pretty in their first job and well on their way to having ‘a life’.
Not everyone of course, we’re talking about the blessed few upon whom karma smiled, and who of course had the acumen to think ahead. But you see what I mean. Once stuck in professional no-man’s land, it’s pretty damn hard to claw your way out, especially when you’re aiming for a job in a competitive field such as journalism (hi), which requires evidence of busy labour. “But I have a first class degree, a bagful of awards and a pretty sweet list of work experience placements”. Nope, unless you’ve been employed by a respectable (ie: widely circulated) publication for at least a year OR have a helluva good specialised qualification, you are barely worth the gum on the heel of that elusive editor who refuses to answer your emails.
What happened though? When did the outlook become so bereft of any hope? And when did we supposedly bright young things become such ungrateful, acrid husks of woe? After all, a few decades ago my main concern would have been the hunt for a groom to worry about all this job malarky on behalf of us both. Now that’s only plan two (*JOKE. Unless things get really bad).
The recession (I’m really sick of that word, so that will be the only time I whisper its bromidic name in the course of this moan, er, article) obviously hasn’t helped. The unrealistic glamorisation of the hack trade, has, I think, also added rather to the numbers of aspiring scribes clamouring for their slice of the journo pie.
Take Twitter for example. I joined a couple of months ago because it appears to be the ‘done thing’. And thanks to Twitter, I am now privy to the minutiae of the lives of almost every well-known journalist one might care to name. And this doesn’t just entail their personal opinions on the hot topics of the day, but actual titbits (or jaw breaking gobfuls) of their home lives. And what fabulous lives they are.
Initially, I must confess to having felt a hint of jealousy. When, for example, India Knight and Caitlin Moran, both highly successful and extremely talented self-made journalists tweet each other to arrange celebratory cocktails “when you’ve finished your book” (and we know that this book will inevitably sell by the bucket load), the figurative stomach thunders with hunger for that lifestyle – the luxury to type away in one’s beautiful London home safe in the certainty that the fruits of your labour will comfortably furnish an entire Christmas shop within the hallowed confines of Selfridges and Harvey Nichols.
I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that this is undeserved, or that these fortunate women didn’t have to pay their dues and work their way up. But things have undeniably changed in the last couple of decades, and whilst deeply painful to accept, we ‘newbies’ (until October that is) must either find something else to do or acknowledge the fact that we’re just going to have to suck it up and endure whatever it takes to get ahead.
SO if you can’t afford an MA or quickie journalism course (I can’t), write. Get a blog. Learn your stuff. Apply for things. Obviously learn how to use InDesign, WordPress, etc. But to be honest, though all the technological fireworks look pretty on a CV, ultimately the key thing is to be good and be motivated. And be interested. It doesn’t matter what your topic is; be it music, film, fashion, the environment (gulp), whatever, keep up to date so that when your dream job comes up you’ll ace the interview. Don’t be picky.
Frankly, if you’re actually talented you don’t need loads of serious writing practice. Just take what relevant work you can, suck up, be prepared to make tea and copies, and thank your lucky stars you have somewhere to go in the mornings. And most importantly, find the thing that spurs you on, cling to it like a limpet, and let it push you forward. For me, that’s watching India and Caitlin on Twitter, and imagining the day when I too will have 57,000 followers (sounds quite cult-like doesn’t it) and can afford to stuff myself to the gills with organic goodies bought online and delivered to my W1 door.
