I haven’t had much work lately from my Vancouver employer, so I’ve turned to writing articles for the West Sacramento News-Ledger. I have two stories filed, one is under production, and two more are in the future. Local weekly papers are a great way to get into writing. The pay isn’t much but that isn’t the point. The point is to keep writing, keep practicing, keep at the craft. You’ll get some money and recent bylines and other benefits as well.
The articles I’ve written recently have honed my interview skills, made me learn more about editing images in Photoshop, introduced me to recording conversations on my iPhone and in general have kept me in the writing game. I’m about my work. And if you’re a writer, if you really need to write, then you have to have projects to pursue, sentences to structure, paragraphs to figure out. You also need an editor to give you a word count and a second, perhaps harsh opinion on what you might think is magic prose.
The News-Ledger site is down right now, undergoing a makeover. I’ll post my articles here next week after they are published.
Update: I went on to write 15 or so articles for the News-Ledger. A list can be found here (internal link).
