The day after deadline day

I tried to write an update earlier, I was even going to email it in so I wouldn't have to lurk around the site, since I was at work. But then, with the entry barely started, my editor came into the newsroom and although I was still, technically, on my lunch break he started hassling me about one thing or another so I abandoned updating.

Instead I wound up going to the library to find the address of someone who over a month ago saved a woman from drowning, but whom we have not been able to make direct contact with. Although the news editor had pretty much told me to give up on it, I think the editor was just looking for something to do.

Yesterday was deadline day, so today there was barely anyone in the newsroom, and even less work to do. I proof-read some pages for next week's paper (I think I found one spelling error in about 10 pages of school profiles), finished a first draft of my review of the band Engerica, and wrote a piece on a beach clean up that's going on locally this weekend.

Working as a journalist sounds a lot more interesting than it really is. However, it's Friday tomorrow and I'm not insanely bored any more like I was the first couple of days, even if it's not the most exciting job ever. I'm actually surprised how few of the stories, at least the stories I'm covering, I actually write from scratch. Most of the time I'm working from a press release, just rewording it, shortening it, trying to prioritise parts, that kind of thing. But very little of it do I actually create, I've actually had to ignore all the kind of creative things that I thought made good essay writing. But just the same, I have a story on page two of the paper this week, with my name on the byline, so that's pretty good.

I imagine if I was actually trained as a journalist -- and perhaps not just a frustrated novelist, as the university seem to think -- then the work would be more varied, with interviewing of people, and the like. Still, I haven't made a single cup of coffee yet, and I don't know where the photocopier is, so it can't be all bad. It just would be a whole lot better if I was getting paid for it. The important thing is that, yeah, I really think that I could do this for a living.

Wasn't that more interesting than yesterday's random forgotten piece from my pen-and-paper journal?