|
How not to write regularly
If you have any writing ability at all, writing a regular column is a piece of cake.
But writing a good, readable column requires rare talents, enthusiasm and dedication. It is an art that is inherent and self-developed.
There are many journalists in this world who have managed to get onto the columnists pedestal, but only a select few deserve the position. Too many average hacks stay up there when they should be toppled and cast into the pit for impersonation or failing to sustain an initial flare. Sadly the role of the writing columnist diminishes each year as radio and television personalities take on the task of news, sports and social commentary - sometimes, even humour.
Then there is the long-heralded domination of the Web.
Ah, the Web and its bluetoothed associates whose writing and SMSs are simultaneously enlivening and mutilating the English language; clarifying and confusing communication; changing the style, the rhythm, the tone - even the purpose - of writing. But that is another subject. In the context of column-writing and its revered champions, the Web's relevance here is its multitude of burgeoning bloggers whose combined efforts are changing and democratising the commentators' craft.
Pillars among the columns
Post-WorldWarTwo boasted numbers of vastly influential and independent-minded newspaper columnists such as Alistair Cook , Manchester Guardian (later BBC) correspondent, and Scotty Reston, Washington correspondent of the New York Times. There were many in that era who resonate for me. (Resonate? There's a mis-used word which none of them exercised. Only scientists, engineers and audio-specialists used it, until it became fashionable at the beginning of this century.)
But it is humour, in my view, which is surely the most difficult form of column writing to sustain. The names of the print humorists ring out, even for someone with a memory as faded as mine. In mid 20th century they included humourist Patrick Campbell of the London Observer; Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker and others of the New Yorker, Damon Runyon of the N.Y. Post, I seem to remember, and latterly Dave Barry of the Miami Herald and the gloriously, publicly, politically incorrect P J O'Rourke.
There are many more, of course, and even young adults should recall Art Buchwald whose humour column, right up until his death in 2007, was syndicated around the world three or four days a week for decades. Even though he relied all his days on just one or two formulae for his gentle satire, his is an unparalleled achievement of deserved longevity.
Leaders among the Locals
South Africa over the years boasted several fine humour columnists. The old ones that spring to mind include A B Hughes, 'J D' and Fred Mayne all great characters employed by the Rand Daily Mail. John Scott has had a long, intermittent run on the Cape Times, and there is the freelancing icon of glorious political incorrectness, Ben Travato.
Probably the best-read humour columnist South Africa has ever had is my friend James Clarke, whose newspaper column is now also read on the Web in a dozen countries. James was pushed into the arduous challenge of a daily humour column just as he was beginning to think about retiring. Clarke's column in The Star has a quality of humour which few daily newspaper columns in the world have ever matched, for it eschews satire, snide cracks, innuendoes and most of the other tools that sustain daily readership. He relies on gentle odd-ball stuff that disguises wisdom and he has countless readers who respond by feeding him material.
Clarke has the complaint of all successful humourists. Once he was the nation's leading writer on environmental affairs, campaigning on issues which few knew of at a time when no-one had heard of eco-anything, let alone global warming. As a humorist James once lamented: 'No-one takes me seriously any more'.
It was a price worth paying; an achievement worth having.
Incidentally James Clarke has written about 30 books.
Part-timers behind the columns
Then there are columnists like this writer. We are, in a sense, part-time columnists - old-world bloggers perhaps - because we were not dedicated to the noble cause. We fill in, or fill the column as an after-thought because we have to, or because we are bad column writers.
I fear I may match all three of those descriptions yet I have published many millions of words in columns in a number of different newspapers over the years. I began more than 50 years ago, as a cadet journalist on a small daily, reluctantly filling in for the 'Women's Page' columnist. I didn't know a frill from a folderol and I desperately didn't want to fill that space. . . but on a small paper one might be ordered to do anything, from editing to making the tea.
I believed I could no more write a women's interest column than I could edit or make tea. But you learn. You learn.
Fortunately I have no record of any of the columns I wrote spasmodically in my first 20 years in journalism
Unfortunately I happen to have a whole file of lighter columns from later years.
However, I shall use only a few here to illustrate two 'How-not-to's, which are:
1). If you want to write regularly in one format - travel writing, say, or a published diary, or especially, a regular column... don't change style, tone or mood. It deprives your readers of their familiar comfort zone, and deprives them of whatever expectations they had.
2). Don't attempt to write regular instalments unless you have sufficient time to give them the attention they deserve. Commitment to a deadly deadline is one thing. But quality is more important. Quality requires time and much effort.
Hopefully, my selected examples will follow here (at some stage). If you have the time and stomach for it, you can read more among the pieces stored under the section cryptcally called columns.
(Samples will /should /may /perhaps not follow)
|
