"Always and forever a Journalist"

The opening line of Rudyard Kipling's short story "A Matter of Fact" is "Once a priest, always a priest; once a mason, always a mason; but once a journalist, always and forever a journalist."

I did that for a while. I wasn't any good, but I did it. And now that I'm looking to do something else I find myself unable to shake the label. Maybe it's because I didn't go into journalism out of a burning desire to tell the truth, but it was one avenue of things I wanted to do. I wanted to write, and journalism is one way to write and get paid - at least it was in 2007. Then 2008 hit and verifying the truth wasn't necessary anymore.

But, it got burrowed into me, that importance of checking the facts, writing crisp copy. It'll never leave. It led me into a publishing job working for someone who didn't give a damn about facts, relevance, or any of that stuff you need to worry about as a journalist. But I cared, and it cost me just about everything.

Maybe it's because I'm not confrontational, which you have to be as a journalist - people don't tell their stories to the media because YOU want them to, they tell stories to the media because THEY want to. And how do you resist the tide of PR, publicity, marketing and activism that is actively trying to get everyone's attention? You prod, cajole, butter up, shake up, seduce, and encourage people to spill the beans. Then it's printed and they get mad at you. Such is life.

I write. I write because if I didn't all these words and thoughts would stay up in my head and I need some way of getting them out. I also write because I can barely talk - when I order things at restaurants people can't hear me. I get nervous and stutter. And I garble words and people take me at those words instead of the ones I want to say. That's all fixed when I'm writing. I'm also more assertive when I write, since I can definitely say what I think instead of backing down. Journalism's great and necessary, but that's not the entirety of what I do.

I once had a conversation with an editor about why so many journalists turn out to be drinkers. And we both concluded that it was because we have to know everything about all the things that are happening all the time. And doing that makes your brain hurt. And you can't miss anything, since if you do your competition will see it. Editors can't miss anything - The publisher at my last job decided to play author at one point and resisted editing. And sure enough, there were lots of mistakes in his work, which he dismissed when I pointed them out. "Nobody will notice them," he said. And my usual retort was that if an editor spots a mistake, chances are a reader will. My go to guide to feature writing says that if editors don't catch things, readers will. This argument didn't persuade the publisher-turned-"author."

So here we are. I've got the journalism instincts, but I want to use them for another purpose. A purpose more in line with what I want to do, and use them in conjunction with other instincts. Let's see where this goes.