Assistant Editor

As this is my first blog here, I will quickly say hello and thanks for reading. On other blogs I’ve written, I’ve started by apologizing for mistakes I’m bound to make, overgeneralizing important issues, becoming melodramatic, resigning myself to coming eschaton and in the same post cheering with wild-eyed faith in the human spirit. However, I won’t make that apology here.

Although fiction writing is my first love, I am very interested in journalism and read tons of it. In any kind of writing, the writer has to deal with the filters of editors and such. For screenwriting, it’s armies of development and marketing people. There are fewer overt filters in journalism, but the MSM is still putting out a polished product. It’s only in papers like the Underground that writers are freer to speak truth to power. Mainly because there’s no money in it.

Christopher Ketcham has an interesting piece at Counterpunch about the agony and fulfillment of freelance writing.