Woe to Write

I decided I wanted to be a journalist at ten years old. It was a time when Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was enjoying its success on TV, and I wanted to be the woman that captured Superman’s affections. It was a typical ten year old dream, and like most childhood dreams, was not one that was going to be easily achieved.

Like other kiddie dreams, that one should have been lost in the pipeline. But the fact that I inhabit a Disney world of my own, means that this realisation has taken over a decade to dawn on me. When my friends started abandoning their childhood dreams in favour of the more realistic, I was still persevering (ahem, hoping) with mine.

Thirteen years later, I have finally realised how stupid I really am. By the time I figured there were no superheroes worth chasing and traded news reporting for magazine writing it was too late. My dream was already lost.

I blame the can-do attitude of modern feminism for letting me think I can do what I want, I blame the gorgeous but misleading glossiness of mainstream magazines, I blame Carrie Bradshaw for making it a dream that a lot of women crave.

I did two media degrees (one at postgraduate level), went to my share of writing festivals, sought mentoring in all the right places. I photocopied, and bought coffees, and slaved away in archive offices as an intern two days a week, and learned squat. I should have known that my lack of label know-how, my bare, make-up free face and my ability to spell was never going to earn me a job at the glossies. But I still tried. Even though I knew they were going to dumb me down.

I even went down the advertising route. Surely if I got my foot in the door by working on the other side of the mag office, someone was bound to notice me? Wrong. I worked my way up two spots in the advertising ranks, and was served with a redundancy letter (and some bullshit outreach program) some months later. The lady on the other side of the phone line told me her program served to help me evaluate what I wanted out of my career. My ex-firm had paid $11,000 for the program, even though I had known what I wanted for years, and was biding my time, waiting for someone to give me a chance. I never enrolled, and did not call her back.

I come from the Sex and the City generation. Carrie Bradshaw bought Manolos and Fendi bags on the money from a column she wrote once a week. While still paying her rent and going out for cocktails every weekend. I worked full-time in a shitty, brain-numbing sales job and went home after a long day and still persevered with my dream. I wrote pitch letters, did research, sorted out interviews I could do on the train or on my lunch break. I carried my notebook everywhere, in the hope that inspiration would strike me, a magazine would bite, and I would score.

Don’t get me wrong. I sold my first article at 20, when I was still a student. But I have had three years to make contacts and cement myself somewhere where I was going to get my big break. But I got break-ups. And rejection letters with nothing more than ‘Dear Sarah, Thanks but we are not interested’. Sometimes I didn’t even get the thanks. They were discouraging me from trying.

The worst thing is that this is all I know how to do. I can’t catch, or throw, or sell advertising pages. I am too honest. I tell people when I am ripping them off. I can’t add or minus or divide. But I love words and sentences and meanings.

But words and meanings have screwed me up. Writer now means you must have a regular column, or a fabulous novel in the works. It does not mean sitting at home in front of an old laptop in a hoodie begging anyone to take your writing, because it’s all you have left and you are slowly losing your sanity.

Writer means strolling down a city street wearing fabulous heels and sharing your glamorous life with the world. And I have stuffed it up already. I’m only sharing my woes.

But perhaps by doing so, I can help another young girl watching Smallville and wishing she were reporter Chloe  Sullivan from making the same mistake. And maybe when she grows up and realises that there are no such thing as men who fly, she won’t get Carried away.

Editor’s Note: You could be forgiven for thinking Miss Ayoub has all but given up hope. Au contraire. She has started a blog for aspiring writers where she shares her experiences and tips as a freelance writer, research student and publisher of Trespass Magazine. For those of you who need a dose of reality and some honest words of advice (from aspiring and established writers) when it comes to kicking off a wordsmith career, you need to head to Wordsmith Lane.