REASONS TO WRITE

I am watching The Carrie Diaries, which is a book-made-into-television-series about Carrie Bradshaw before we see her in Sex and the City. 

In The Carrie Diaries, Carrie is still in high school. She is around sixteen or seventeen at the time and it shows her developing into the columnist we see later on.

She deals with a lot of different experiences while growing up -- friends and their issues related to identity and typical of youth, her boyfriend who in the show is named Sebastian Kydd and had sex with his art history teacher before joining Carrie at Castlebury High, and losing her mother to cancer. 

I like the show because it shows Carrie, who in a way is an inspiration to me, growing into being her own person and finding her style as a writer. I like that is shows her using her experiences as material for her diary even at a young age, like I used to do.

And I feel as though a lot of people might write the show off as superficial or less than profound, but that alludes to another reason why I like it -- it shows that not all writers have to write to change the world, or whatever. There are writers who write about things that bring comfort to people, like Carrie writes about relationships in Sex and the City. 

I feel as though as an aspiring documentary filmmaker and journalist, I often pressure myself to produce something that is poignant and profound and will provoke thought and change minds. While that will always be my ultimate goal, watching the young Carrie every monday night with one of my best girlfriends Aneisha reminds me that it’s okay to write about every day experiences, however big or small, just for the sake of writing. 

Image from Google

DO YOUR JOB

Yesterday my classmates and I watched the Phoenix Sinclair inquiry take place at the Winnipeg Convention Centre.

The inquiry is trying to discover the factors that led to and allowed the death of the little girl, which happened in 2005. It was at the hearing that I remembered, in part, why I want to be a journalist/filmmaker/person who creates art to raise awareness and provoke thought and social change.

We were all sitting around listening to witnesses who had worked at Winnipeg Child and Family Services at the time that Phoenix’s file passed through, and admittedly it wasn’t the most thrilling experience. But I tried to listen really carefully and take as many notes, as accurately as I could. And then they got to the details surrounding what Winnipeg CFS workers typically look for when trying to assess if a child is being abused.

They named bruises and children walking funny and having trouble sitting down and a variety of other things that made me have to blink away tears. They said Phoenix went to Wellington School, and I don’t know why but that made the whole thing very real to me and it felt like my heart was fucking breaking right there in the room.

Journalists are, in some cases, required to know about things that are too horrible to imagine, like in this case. And while I am not claiming to be an expert on the case by any means, I did gain a lot of insight into what might have happened by attending the hearing yesterday knowing I was going to have to report on it. It reminded me of the importance of doing that; of listening carefully and gaining awareness about whatever is going on in this crazy world and of raising the awareness of others, too, so maybe one day they will rally for change. Basically making sure that people don’t forget about the Phoenix’s and the Beverly Rowbothams and the Aileen Wuornos’s (whatever your views are on her) and the Debs (see my post titled “Flying High Again -- Deb is the name of the woman in that story) and all the rest of the ones who can be noticed and even helped, maybe, if me and you, and all the other journalists can lend them a voice.

I will elaborate on this in my next post.  

STORY IDEAS

I have learned a lot about coming up with story ideas in my second year of Creative Communications. For example, in Broadcast Journalism, I cannot simply put down the first story idea that comes to me. I have to consider what I will use for b-roll, who I will interview, whether the story will make an interesting one visually, and if I can arrange to pull the story off in time for it to be aired (or, so far this year, submitted to the instructor by the deadline).

While I, as a student, haven’t talked or thought about story ideas as much in regular journalism class as I have in broadcast journalism class, I have still considered it, and I feel as though my idea about how to find a story has changed.

While I never saw the value in ripping off stories from larger media outlets, such as the Freep or the Sun, I have developed some techniques that might appear basic to everyone but are news to me. I call them my “skills as an observer.”

The first skill as an observer I have developed is looking around at thing when I am walking, rather than texting on my cell phone or going on facebook. It is very surprising how much I actually notice when I really give things a good look and my eyes are open and all of that.

For example, in the summertime I was walking on Main Street by the Seven Eleven that’s a few blocks away from my house and I guess I decided to be more observant than usual that day. I noticed the Manitoba Clothing Company and for whatever reason, I stopped in front of it and just stared into the window. The mannequins in there had been figures in the backdrop for my entire life; I remember not noticing them as I walked by thousands of times with my mother when I was a kid, and later, by myself. I decided to go in and ask some questions about this place for the first time in my 21 years on earth. 

I found out that in addition to having a sweet selection of deadstock, high-waist Levi’s from the 70s, the company was closing. It had been open since 1944 and used to make uniforms for a whole bunch of city services and stuff (the Winnipeg Police Force, etc.) until outsourcing basically put them out of business. They had a whole factory upstairs that the owner told me used to be filled with forty workers, and now can only afford to employ seven. There were old men that still hung around there that had been working there since being sixteen. For those people, it was like the end of an era, or a bunch of eras. Now that’s a story.

The second skill I learned as an observer is to listen carefully to what people say. This includes reading things carefully, too.

And even if it looks weird, carry a notepad wherever you go. That way, when you are trying to brainstorm story ideas one day before your broadcast J class, you can just get out your notepad and look what you have written in there, waiting to be reported.  

Those are just a few tricks I’ve learned about finding story ideas. You might find, as I have, that using observational skills will not only make you a better journalist, but it will make you acutely aware of your surroundings and that might make your life easier. It’s made mine easier, and I generally feel better about myself, too. It might even make you a better friend or girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever you are. Sweet.

MAKE NO PROMISES

I have been thinking about where I will be at this time next year and it makes me feel scared. I have some plans and whatever, but I feel as though one of the downfalls of being a journalist - or any sort of creative person - is that nothing is guaranteed career-wise.

I guess nothing is guaranteed for anyone, ever. But I feel as though nothing is guaranteed even more for people who enter jobs that are not “in demand” like a doctor is “in demand.” It is strange to me, though, that journalists are not more in demand because the world would certainly be difficult to understand for the average person without them. I touched on this a little bit in my last post, about how, in my opinion, the job of a journalist is to help the public understand occurrences around the globe. 

Anyway, as I was saying, that’s the downfall - that there is so much competition and so few jobs and the industry is changing and getting even more uncertain. But I also think those things are kind of like highlights. I usually like things to be rollercoaster scary, and I have gotten myself in and out of trouble all of my life so I feel as though I am as prepared as the next person to enter something like this where everything is kind of uncertain. It is almost like a trade off - as a journalist, and as I experienced on a small scale interning at a paper this summer, you get to go around and observe a number of things every single day, and then you get to tell the whole world (as you know it) the story, what happened. Up until I was about 20 that used to be my life anyway, just cruising around and deciding on what I should do depending on how good of a story it would be later, so it was pretty nice to get paid to do it and not have to be so personally involved at the same time when I worked for the paper. Having a sweet gig like that obviously doesn’t come for free. That’s what I mean when I said it’s like a trade off - the jobs are few and you have to work your fuckin ass off to hook anything up. But in the grand scheme of thing it makes sense because I guess if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

I remember at the paper this summer I was cruising around on Portage in the company car with my Lennon rose-colored shades on. And I had covered a story where someone drowned in a pond so I was feeling sad. I was sad that, before my very eyes, the mission of the underwater police unit turned from a rescue mission to a recovery mission. And I was sad that the kid was so young and just drowned in a pond, just like that. But I was a little happy because I got to be there to observe and try my best to get all the facts about what lead up to this, so in a way, and on a surface level, I was doing my part in helping others around the city understand why things went the way they did. It didn’t feel like doing enough, really, because if I could I would bring that kid back, but it was the most I could do as a journalist, you know what I mean? I guess I was happy too because, on a personal level, observing that whole recovery mission and all the people standing around waiting for this kid to get pulled out of the water made me think about my own life as a kid (yes I am still a kid I don’t care what you say) and that I was alive and doing a cool job and it was summertime and later that day Katherine (the other intern and my pal) and I were going to Chapters and she was going to pick out some cool fiction for me, even though I felt like I was living a life I didn’t even need to escape from. Talk about seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.  

And I remember getting to go to a farm one day when I was reporting, and learning about how damaging wild predators can be to livestock, and seeing farmers loosing their money and their minds over it, and I remember thinking I was pretty lucky to get to know different things like that. And to have the opportunity to make a difference in someones life by being the vehicle through which their story gets told.

So that’s what it’s about, I guess. There are no guarantees but if you work hard enough to hook it up for yourself it’s pretty fuckin sweet. And I’m okay with knowing that. 

THE WORLD

As I usually do, lately I am thinking a lot about the differences between fiction and non-fiction, or journalism, in writing.

I watched Chicken Ranch, the first documentary Nick Broomfield made when he got out of film school, on Saturday. He discovered the Chicken Ranch, which is a legal brothel operating outside of Las Vegas, through an amateur pilot friend who read about the ranch in a plane magazine, because the ranch has a plane that flies in clients. 

The documentary made me think about my need and desire to open my eyes to things going on around me and things going on, even if not so much around me: to read the paper, listen to the news, and know what’s happening. It’s strange because I developed a very strong idea about news media outlets after working for the paper this summer: I was very skeptical leaving once I saw the way news is manufactured, I guess you could say. I left thinking news was not in line with the truth, or that is was merely some version of it.

And then the editor of that paper, Paul Samyn, came in to the school I go to and did a presentation about the paper and the media in general to first year CreComm students. I managed to sneak in for the last few minutes of it, where Samyn described the paper itself, and the media in general, as a tool people can use to understand the world. So maybe I had it all wrong, then. Maybe the paper is only the beginning for a curious reader: it will give you the story, as honest and straightforward as possible (at least that is how it should be) and then if you want, you can go and find out more about what you’re reading about on your own time. I find comfort in understanding the paper that way, though: as a way of understanding all kinds of occurrences. And that is what I want to do for others: help them understand certain rules and laws and situations and people, whether it be through journalism, documentary filmmaking, or general motion picture.

And then something else happened that made me notice something entirely different and unrelated about fact and fiction. I went to one of my favorite places on planet eart as I know it: Chapters. I spent the whole day there in the fiction and literature section, and after selecting Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro, I went down to the Young Adult section. I went straight to the Judy Blume books. She is one of my favorite authors, and I’d say most young girls have read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, or at least most “half-Jewish” girls like me. Anyway, I picked up a copy of Blubber, which I’ve read already but do not own, and started to read it again.

And I am in love because automatically I was brought into the fifth grade class of Jill Brenner and I felt sad for Linda Fishcher who Jill and her friends call Blubber and I understood Jill’s mother as she huddled in the corner of the family bathroom and smoked a cigarette after she had quit and I was no longer in Chapters or in Winnipeg or in my own life.

And then I went home and a girlfriend of mine picked me up. After we went out for dinner and we were driving home in the dark, we stopped in front of the seedy hotel where the former subject of a documentary I was shooting lived. The same one who left me messages that kept me up at night and the same one who had me worried he was going to fuck me up the way he fucked some guy up in jail. Anyway, I saw him as my girlfriend and I drove by. I saw him standing outside the hotel, now rooming house, in the dark, and I remembered there are scary things and people in the world. And then I remembered that unlike in fiction, where the author creates worlds and lives in them while writing, and others live in while reading, journalists do not get to choose the story. They have to remember bad things happen. And that scares me and makes me want to live in fiction forever. 

TELL ME EVERYTHING

Today in Journalism class the instructor told us that we are going to be doing a U.S. election assignment. 

That made me start thinking about what types of things different Canadian publications cover, and what types of things they should cover. I guess I started thinking about why Canadian publications and media outlets cover political happenings in the United States, or in Europe or the Middle East. Should we be concerned about stuff that happens far, far away?

I think the answer is yes.

Whoever gets elected in the upcoming election in the States will probably affect Canadians in ways that I do not know, but more importantly, Canadians have the right to knowledge about what’s going on anywhere in the world. That is one of the most amazing things about being Canadian: unlike different parts of the world, we are not limited when it comes to information. 

If I want to go and read about the political climate in Syria, I can do that and I can rest assured that the website will not be blocked by the government. In fact, I can look up anything from terrorist attacks to various religions to gay porno and no one is going to stop me because I live in a country defined almost entirely by freedom and our media outlets reflect that. Through interning at a newspaper this summer, I learned I can write about different things too, and (in most cases) I won’t have to worry about being the target of a violent attack over it. At least not when I am in Canada.

So I think that covering the upcoming U.S. election is important because people are interested in it. It is also important because the election over there will probably have an influence over the way things are done here. But most of all, it is important because as Canadian media outlets and journalists, we are taking advantage of a right that, unfortunately, is not recognized in all regions of the world. We are taking advantage of a right to know whatever we want.

If this seems simple it's because it is, but overall I am glad I live in a place where I can call information my own for the taking (and distributing). I am glad I grew up in a place where, as a one time aspiring journalist, I knew I could write about things that matter to me and matter to the Canadian population and my life would not be threatened, as was the sad case with the young girl in India recently. 

Now back to creating things that I would not be allowed to show in other countries. Bye!

A THOUSAND FAREWELLS

In A Thousand Farewells, author and journalist Nahlah Ayed describes what it was like to leave Winnipeg, Manitoba and return to a refugee camp plagued by conflict and violence in Amman, Jordan. 

She was thirteen years old when her and her family returned to Canada, but the things she saw when her family initially moved back to the camp inspired her to cover what the book describes as one of the world’s “most volatile regions” as a journalist.

Ayed’s knack for describing things comprehensively worked beautifully in the book. This is likely the result of her observant nature (a trait common among journalists who produce thorough work) and strong memory. For example, at the beginning of chapter two, Refugees by Design, Ayed states that she “clearly” remembers what it was like to enter the camp, even though it was the middle of the night and Ayed was a young girl at the time. The small details, like her parents “taking turns sighing” or that the metal door her father knocked on was “dotted with rusted bullet holes” paints a vivid and frightening image in the reader’s mind. 

Her talent for selecting detail that will evoke particular emotions and tell a specific story runs through the entire book, and makes the read memorable, while creating obvious contrast with the stories concerning the Middle East that one sees on the 6 o’clock news. In chapter seven, Ghosts, Ayed describes the role Arabic poetry played in her own life growing up, and the role it continued to play for the Arabs at large. “Arab poetry was owned by all the people,” Ayed writes on page 135. One would not think such a detail would appear in a book that seems, prior to reading it, to be about Middle Eastern conflict, refugee camps, and the Arab Spring. It gently humanizes a region that is often characterized by violence, while details like the fact that a group of surgeons performed free cosmetic surgery for people disfigured by Saddam’s torture supported those gentle details by suggesting in an urgent way that the goings-on in the Middle East leaves humans, like you and me, disfigured and despaired every single day.

The one critique I have when it comes to what did not work in the book is that, at times, Ayed was writing for an audience who is at least somewhat familiar with Muslim culture. I felt mildly frustrated when I had to look up certain words or references in order to thoroughly understand the book. The first time this happened was as early as page 10, when Ayed states that “Eid was a memorable occasion, but so were Christmas and Easter.” I expected Eid was some kind of Muslim holiday, but I checked it out on the internet just to be sure (for the record, Eid comes at the end of Ramadan, which is a month of fasting for Muslims). Therefore, maybe some explanations are missing here and there in A Thousand Farewells, but then again the book is not supposed to be a guide to Arab culture. 

The thing I, as a journalist, learned most from this book is to remember to observe: to speak less and listen more. Ayed would never have gotten the stories she has in this insightful book had she not constantly been in tune with her surroundings. 

If I compare the book to another non-fiction book I studied in journalism class last year, Journey for Justice: How Project Angel Cracked the Candace Derksen Case by Mike McIntyre, the one obvious difference is that Ayed ascends simply being a reporter and becomes a storyteller, while McIntyre got caught up in stating the facts. A Thousand Farewells moves fluidly as a story, and the reader remains interested. Journey for Justice became repetitive and laden with reports from killer Mark Grant’s psychiatrist, and at times became boring to me as the reader.

The book affected me in a simple yet profound way: I found it inspiring. It made me think about the role of autobiography in journalism and art, and I was happy to read a clear, coherent story written by someone who evidently had been carrying it around in their heart for nearly all their life. Ayed had something to say for a long, long time and after investing time in getting it out on paper, she said it. That is something all journalists and writers can aspire to.