Working for a newspaper, or unlearning what I thought I knew

Writing has become a thing I think a lot more about. It's become something that I re-draft and deliberate and add facts and cut out and rethink. I've only been at the paper a month so far. A month isn't really long enough to have established anything very much. But it's making me ponder the art of writing. And in so doing, it's also made me lose a lot of the unfettered joy of writing that my blog always seemed to be. It's made me think about the hook that is needed to absorb the reader, the repetitions in my phrases, the clumsiness of my syntax. Maybe we have to unlearn everything in order to become truly good at anything. Strip away all those bad habits and learn over. But it's kind of like losing an old friend.

Because most of all it's made me start judging. I look at a piece of writing and I rate it. I read anything that I've written, and immediately want to un-write it, for it's romantacism, for its indulgence, for its lack of information, for its excess of information. And I've started thinking about the reader. Not, as the benign force I imagine all you lot to be; forgiving of my sentences that twirl round in endless circles, spiralling off topic and through a range of random thoughts before grounding unsteadily to an exhuastion fueled standstill on the far side of no conclusion. I picture readers as continually ready to flip the page, move on to the next throwaway article of the paper. I attribute them with no prior knowledge of my topic. I imagine that they are not very good at reading sentences longer than two lines. I SPELL OUT every THING... Yorkshire means Britain, I will say. A trilogy means THREE. I rack my brains for stupid plays on words, or cliches - because nothing works better in a headline.

I've also taken to salivating over the New York Times or The Guardian. My eyes grow wide over The New Yorker and I grumble jealously over Da Berg's quick witted, compact english usage.

Feature articles have to begin and explode and go somewhere. They have to be informative, and can't use "I" and need to be quirky and sparkling. One also should be overwhelmingly, depressingly informed. But somehow names slip through my fingers, along with the capitals of countries or the date India gained independence, or who Britney Spears is married to.

So I'm not sure I really have what it takes for journalism. Or atleast, I've recognised what a technique it is - and how long it is going to take to learn.

The question then becomes - Should one stick to what one is "naturally" good at? (whatever that is... it's really not something I have ever really found an answer to) Or is "natural" talent a misconception? Is it all about the determination to do it more than the skill itself? (that old 1% genius, 99% sweat).

Answers on a postcard to be sent to Kichijoji, Tokyo onegaishimasu.