Interviewed: Plus One Brisbane

Sarah McVeigh of Brisbane music blog Plus One asked me some questions, mostly about music writing and my work habits. I answered them. Excerpts below.

Is Brisbane as good a place as any to be a music writer?

Without doubt. There are loads of great stories within the local scene waiting to be told, and there are always nationals and internationals visiting. Anyone who argues otherwise isn’t trying hard enough.

You seem to be getting alot of work – what’s your work routine like? How much time is spent chained to the desk? How do you deal with all the distractions of being constantly online?

I pitch at least ten story ideas to various publications each week. Those that are approved, I write. Those that are rejected, I shop elsewhere if appropriate; if not, I let them go. I use an application called RescueTime to track the time that I spend on the computer each week, and how my time is split between different kinds of software usage. (It’s free and it’s pretty ace, you should check it out.) Looking back through my personal history, I spend 40-45 hours per week in front of a computer. I split my time between working from my bedroom, and from an office with friends just outside of the Brisbane CBD.

Distractions are tough. Really fucking tough. If I told you that I had the discipline to work all day without checking in on Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Mess+Noise, The Vine, ABC News and email, I’d be lying. But I am improving. Slowly.

That’s the beauty and burden of working in and around the internet: it’s both my workplace and playground. It is a pleasure and a curse. But all things considered, I get by. I don’t miss deadlines. Those are the biggest motivator to quit screwing around and get to work: the reality that if you miss a deadline, you’re fucked. So the goal is to consistently create deadlines for myself (published articles, reviews, blog stories, Waycooljnr entries, etc) to ensure that I’m constantly on deadline. That’s the mentality I aim to inhabit.

On a related note, the website that I use to plan my week is TeuxDeux. It’ll probably change your life, like it did mine.

What (in your view) is the likelihood of you sustaining a career in music writing? Do you know many young writers who are managing to earn a wage?

I don’t know many my age who are earning a wage, no. But my skills aren’t based entirely around around writing. I’m doing copywriting and digital strategy on the side. I just tend not to blog about these side gigs, though, because they’re less interesting. In time, though, all will be revealed. It’s all contributing to my path as a writer, in the end, so I’m grateful for every opportunity I receive.

As to the first question, it’s a case of ‘we’ll see’. Ask me the same question at the end of the year. Right now, it’s fun and it’s profitable, so I see no reason to give it up.

Full interview at Plus One Brisbane. Thanks Sarah.

Filed under Writing | Tags: Brisbane, Interview, Journalism, Media, Music, Music writing, plus-one-brisbane, procrastination, sarah-mcveigh, work, Writing | Comment (0)

Meg White asks: How do I approach pitching as a freelancer?

Meg White is my favourite young Brisbane writer. She’s relocated to Sydney to write for Australian Penthouse in recent months, but that’s a minor formality in a nascent, yet distinguished career. Highlights? She wrote an amazing live review of Brisbane rock band Hits, launched a brilliant war against The Courier-Mail’s shoddy online music journalism [full series of posts here - read from bottom], and tore to shreds a decidedly average Butcher Birds live review I wrote for Mess+Noise last October.

Meg asked:

Hey Andrew,

I have a question for you, seeing as you’re the most successful freelancer I know of. When you contact publications, do you make a general enquiry about their freelancing capacity, do you pitch them stories or do you offer to sell them content you’ve already written?

I’ve been toying with the idea of getting involved in the freelance world because there’s no clause in my contract about writing for competing publications, and while I’ve been poking around and talking to people, these seem to be the three main approaches used. Just wondering which one works best for you.

I replied:

Hey Meg,

This is how I approach pitching new publications.

1. Find the name of the editor.
2. Try to find someone who knows her/him, and ask whether they’re able to give me a quick email intro to the editor.
3. If this approach succeeds and someone intros me, I jump into the email convo and ask whether the editor is open to freelance pitches.
4. Failing that acquaintance-intro tactic, I write a quick intro mentioning my bylines, link to my published work, and ask whether they are open to pitches.
5. From there, it’s usually a clear-cut ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

I find that just outright pitching stories, without any kind of preamble, looks (and feels, to me) rude. I try to picture the response of the editor on the other end. ‘Who is this person, and why do I care?’ *delete*

I have found that every editor who responds to my enquiry (whether intro’d through a third party or not) is upfront about their freelance budget. Most are happy to see story ideas - that is their job, or at least a big part of it, to commission stories - but some will state that it’s rare for freelance pitches to be approved. Which is part of the challenge, of course, and it’s nice to see an initial ‘no, we don’t take freelancers’ turn into a ‘well, that’s a good idea’ after a few weeks/months of persistence.

In response to the third approach you mentioned - I have never written content before it is commissioned. I do not intend to. I don’t like the idea of spending time on something when I’m unsure whether I’ll be paid for it. You know?

Thanks for the message. I kinda wish you didn’t smoke and drink so much, but then, your writing mightn’t be half as interesting if you didn’t put yourself in those situations.

More of Meg at Uberwensch.

More on the topic of pitching stories to newspapers and magazines in these excellent blog posts by freelance writer/editor Rachel Hills.

And more questions about freelance writing answered - eventually - if you ask me.

Filed under Writing | Tags: advice, australian-penthouse, Brisbane, editors, freelancing, meg-white, Music writing, pitching, q-and-a, rachel-hills, the-courier-mail, Writing | Comments (5)

Discussing ‘Lonesome Highway’

Let me tell you about ‘Lonesome Highway‘, my first feature for The Weekend Australian’s ‘Review’ arts + culture lift-out. The story - which you should read (or glance at) here before continuing - discusses the challenges faced by Australian country musicians in 2010.

I spent the week beginning Monday, 18 January 2010 playing the part of ‘freelance writer without work’. I was pitching stories every day, and none of them were sticking. By Friday - after alternating between liaising with editors, and catching up with some friends in the Brisbane music scene - all I had was an approval to interview a hip-hop act for an online publication.. who don’t pay for online content, as I learned soon thereafter.

Earlier that week, I’d sent a Dirty Three/Laughing Clowns tour-related pitch to the editor of the Weekend Australian’s ‘Review’ arts and culture lift-out. I’d been email-introduced to her by a helpful fellow editor at The Australian a few months ago, when I was pitching the idea of a story around the Robert Forster book launch/conversation at Avid Reader. (That one didn’t stick either, obviously.)

Fevered as I was in my determination to get a story idea - any story idea! - accepted, I sent that D3/Clowns pitch and promptly forgot about it. I’d prefaced it with a reminder stating that I’m a writer for Rolling Stone, jmag, etc, and that we’d last emailed in November.

At 4pm on Friday, 22 January - generally despondent, after a week of work with few returns - the editor of ‘Review’ called me. That’s 5pm local time from her office in Sydney, owing to daylight savings.

“I’ve got a problem,” she began.

“Oh?” I replied, wondering a) what I might have done to cause a problem, and b) whether I could perhaps solve said problem.

“I need a story on Australian country music following the conclusion of this year’s Tamworth Country Music Festival. My regular music writer’s just gone on leave. Would you feel comfortable taking on this story?”

I paused for several seconds. “…you know I’m mostly a rock writer, right? For Rolling Stone, and stuff?”

She confirmed, and reiterated the question. The story was due on Wednesday; as in, five days’ time. Word length unspecified; it could be 1,200, or it could be 2,000. I inhaled, and accepted the challenge.

Immediately I pictured myself frantically pushing a library ladder around towering bookshelves that represent the contact details of everyone I’ve ever met. “Which of these people knows something about country music?” I yelled, in my mind. I sure didn’t.

In a gesture that would be repeated throughout the time I spent researching, writing and editing the story, the editor took her time to provide me with some suggested paths of research, historical background, and narrative guidance.

As soon as I hung up, I emailed dozens of my contacts within the music industry, searching for anything resembling a lead with regard to country music-related interview subjects. I put the call out on to my friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. And for the first time, I used a site called SourceBottle, which allows journalists to request sources within a wide range of industries and subject matters.

To my surprise, helpful responses began appearing in my inbox as fast as I could send out requests. My contacts introduced me to experts on the subject. My friends on social networks tipped me off to artists and their managers. And SourceBottle delivered some great offers from watchful PR professionals, who were keen to have their clients represented in a story.

So began a crash course in researching the current players in Australian country music. I read stories filed from the Tamworth festival by The Australian’s regular music writer, Iain Shedden, who I’d interviewed a few months earlier for One Movement Word. I wrote an outline of what I planned for the story to cover, and warmed up with some phone conversations over the weekend. I spent Monday on the phone to country musicians, radio announcers, artist managers, alt-country artists, schoolteachers, historians and record label staff.

All told, I conducted 18 interviews, throughout which I scribbled notes in preparation of listening back to the recorded audio. Tuesday - the 26th, Australia Day - was spent shaping what I’d learned from the experts into a coherent story.

While interviewing, a frequently-recurring topic prompted me to pay more attention to the apparent dearth of  media opportunities available to country musicians. Ultimately, this would become the focal point of the story: what was imagined as a mere discussion on where the genre stands in 2010 morphed into a sympathetic piece highlighting the many challenges faced by country performers. As stated in the story, these are related to image, airplay opportunities, marketing, media attention, and even differences within the community.

I submitted my first draft at 4am the next morning. Upon review, my editor suggested that a couple of follow-up quotes were required from Troy Cassar-Daley to describe the genre in his own words. And somewhere between fact-checking and quote-verifying, I’d forgotten to tighten the narrative structure, so my editor reshaped the piece to improve its flow.

Upon confirming her final edit, the biggest story of my career was out of my hands. It wouldn’t appear in print for 10 days. (The cover from the February 6 issue of ‘Review’ is below right.)

It was the most exhilarating journalistic experience of my life. Five days focussed on researching and synthesising the story of a centuries-old art form into around 2,000 words. What a challenge. I’m so glad I accepted it. It even resulted in my first live-to-air radio interview for ABC Mid-North Coast the day before the story was published. (At the time of writing this, I’ve not yet listened back to it, owing to embarrassment…)

In a way, the whole experience - the initial unexpected, but not unplanned-for phone call, the willingness on the editor’s part to take a chance with me - justified the time and effort I’ve dedicated to my writing since I changed my mindset and became serious about pursuing it as a career.

Looking back, it seems that this occurred sometime in June 2009. I’m simply thrilled that eight months later, I’ve been published in The Weekend Australian, one of the country’s biggest newspapers. Awesome. If you have any questions relating to this story, I’ll try to answer them in the comments.

Thanks to the following people who helped with the story.

Interview subjects: Troy Cassar-Daley, Adam Harvey, Graeme Connors, Amber Lawrence, Anne Kirkpatrick, Joy McKean, Felicity Urquhart,  Luke Austen, Chris Pickering, Roz Pappalardo, John Elliott, Geoff Walden, Nick Erby, Bill Page, Aneta Butcher, Cheryl Byrnes, and Scott Lamond.

Contact sources, miscellaneous inspiration: Stephen Green, David Carter, Craig Spann, Deb Suckling, Ed Guglielmino, Rick Chazan, Nick O’Byrne, Alison Brown, Dan Stapleton, Deborah Jones, Rachael Hall, Tim Lovett, Blair Hughes, Paul & Deb McMillen, and Matt Weller.

Filed under Writing | Tags: abc-radio, australia, country-music, genre, iain-shedden, Interview, lonesome-highway, mid-north-coast, Music, sourcebottle, the-australian, the-weekend-australian, troy-cassar-daley | Comments (6)

Anwyn Crawford discusses live music review techniques

Owing to both arrogance and pride, it took me a while to realise that as a music critic, constructive criticism from your peers should be welcomed.  I get it now, which is why I was thrilled to receive an email from Anwyn Crawford in response to my Porcupine Tree review earlier in the week.

“I have some thoughts on your recently linked-to live review,” she wrote, “if you’ll permit me to share them with you.”

Of course.

Anwyn is an Australian music critic based in Brooklyn. Her words have appeared in The Age, Loops, The Wire, Mess+Noise and Cyclic Defrost; contributions to the latter two are under the pen name Emmy Hennings. You should read her Overland opinion piece on Nick Cave, entitled ‘The Monarch Of Middlebrow‘.

Anwyn doesn’t consider herself as a freelance writer, because in her own words, ”I probably only publish about three articles a year”. That said: she knows her shit. I’m holding her advice on par with what Andrew Ramadge told me last year.

The topic of discussion - my Porcupine Tree review for The Vine - can be found here. You should read it before reading the below, which is an unedited copy of what was sent to me.

First up, it’s far too long. Unless you’re going to be deliberately discursive, or be pursuing a particular thesis about a cultural event that is significant to a lot of people, for instance Marcus’s review of The Tote’s last evening, then less than half that length is ample. Believe me, readers don’t want or need that much information in a live review format. I’m not saying this because I think it should be a “dumbed down” format or that readers aren’t capable of digesting something more complicated - they are - but it’s important to respect the expectations of the form that you’re working in, whatever that might be, which means that if you break the expectations for a particularly compelling reason, then the results will be more fruitful. Part of the skill of a live review, I think, is try and relay, in a reasonably short numbers of sentences, your experience of the performance to a readership. This means trying to pick representative moments of the performance - or occasionally unrepresentative moments, if these seem to get closer to the truth of the event. A song-by-song catalogue has little narrative interest for a reader.

Secondly, and this is my big beef with so much music writing - PUT YOURSELF IN IT. I know that the first rule of essay writing that we’re all taught at school is never to use the first person pronoun. It’s time to put that rule aside. Reviewing is an inherently subjective act. It’s your opinion, and your experience - own it. This doesn’t mean describe what you had for dinner and how your feet were sore and “Oh, I missed the opening band” (classic street press gaffe), it means: don’t let your writing be bloodless. A reader wants to know why the performance might have mattered (or not mattered) and the only way they’re going to be able to get a handle on that is if you tell them why it mattered to you. It will also, almost inevitably, make your sentences shorter and more energetic, because you can can avoid clunky constructions like “One expects” and its many bet-hedging variants. “I think” “I was ecstatic” “My brain was melting” “This has stayed with me for days” - don’t be afraid to say I.

Thirdly, avoid Latinate constructions and “pretentious diction”. I’m with George Orwell on this one. Translate them back into plain English. “Resultantly” = “As a result”. It doesn’t sound more sophisticated when you write “Resultantly”, it just confuses the meaning. Same goes for words like “emotive” (emotional) “reciprocate” (respond) “regale” (you need “shout” or something similar there, because “regale nonsense” as a clause makes no grammatical sense without a subject who is being regaled). Take a sentence like: “It’s a fittingly exhilarating close to an achingly beautiful song, into which the singer interjects a heartily-applauded full band introduction.” It took me about three runs to actually figure out what that meant. “It’s an exhilarating close to a beautiful song, and when singer XY pauses to introduce the band, he gets hearty applause”, is much clearer.

And lastly, also related to Orwell’s timeless advice, avoid cliches and ready-made phrases. Chords nearly always “flourish”. A band is too often on a “jaunt” when the writer doesn’t want to use the word “tour”. There are millions of basslines that “pulse” and countless pianos that sound “plaintive”. Find a more interesting and a more accurate word, if you can, but bear in the mind the above: don’t let it become pretentious. Verbs are your friend, adjectives are often not.

Just the kind of kick-up-arse I needed. Thanks, Anwyn. Pay attention to her blog.

Filed under Writing | Tags: anwyn-crawford, australia, criticism, emmy-hennings, feedback, george-orwell, mess-and-noise, music-criticism, nick-cave, overland, porcupine-tree, Review, the-vine, Writing | Comment (0)

The Vine review: Porcupine Tree @ The Tivoli, February 2010

Here’s my first review for The Vine, a Fairfax Media-owned youth culture site. It’s of British progressive rock band Porcupine Tree [pictured right] playing The Tivoli on February 5, 2010. You can read it here.

I want to discuss this review from a writing perspective. Some background is required.

If you’ve followed my writing over the years, you might have noticed that this review is a return to the long-form, descriptive style that I became known for when writing for FasterLouder.com.au.

To illustrate: compare my Bloc Party @ Riverstage, November 2008 review for FL to this Robert Forster @ QLD Art Gallery, September 2009 review for Mess+Noise.

With the former, I fell into a style that prized observing facts over engaging with the subject matter on an emotional level. To me, the Forster review reads like it’s written from a calm place more conducive to expressing one’s feelings, than simply listing songs played and key musical moments.

To illustrate, it’s less this:

It seems that foul weather has sidestepped Brisbane’s sore and sorry suburbs this weekend: clear skies greet Bloc Party’s arrival onstage, and an overwhelming sense of unity sweeps across the capacity crowd. [...] Following the guitar freak-out during Positive Tension’s bridge (“so fucking useless!”), Okereke’s closing words tease the crowd: “play it cool”. The searing guitar tone of that track and Helicopter number among the likes of Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out as the most memorable rock sounds to emerge from the United Kingdom this decade. (Bloc Party @ Riverstage, November 2008)

Than this:

For seven songs, Robert Forster is alone, armed only with six-string, voice, wit and stare. [...] There’s no hint of melancholy in Forster’s delivery, nor sense of mourning among the crowd; [songwriting partner Grant McLennan's death] happened three years ago, after all. I feel obscene for writing these words, like I’m prodding at Forster’s bruised heart for mentioning McLennan in this context. But more than the half-dozen times I’ve seen the man perform in the last few years, this stage configuration highlights the emotional distance between us and he. (Robert Forster @ QLD Art Gallery, September 2009)

I mentioned earlier that I ‘fell into’ the descriptive style when writing for FasterLouder and street press because it’s the norm. It’s easy. It’s what the majority of street press writers do, and when I stepped into music writing, I paid a lot of attention to my peers within the local community. (I still do read street press, but now I find it most useful when viewed as a resource that highlights what not to do as a music writer.) [Clarification: I'm referring specifically to street press live reviews in this instance.]

I feel that this style of writing is problematic purely because it is so safe. You can’t be wrong when you’re just listing songs played and key musical moments. I’m not saying that anyone can do that. More accurately, anyone familiar enough with a band and able to write coherently can do that.

And if you can do that, if you want to call yourself a music writer or a music journalist - I alternate the two terms loosely, which may be problematic in itself - then that’s fine. You can get your name crossed off the list at the door and watch the band and write down the setlist in your notepad (or crib it from online forums) and write your little description and send it to your editor (who won’t fuck with your copy because it’s so inoffensive and beige) and get published and show your friends and perpetuate the delusion that you’re a worthwhile music writer just because you get published.

If you’re reading this and getting pissed off, hey - I’ve been there. I was that person for nearly two years until I took this role seriously. (You can read more about that here - but I warn you, it’s reasonably incoherent.) Between July 2007 and May 2009, music ‘journalism’, to me, was putting my hand up to review shows that, 90% of the time, I knew I’d like. I’d show up with a friend and get my free tickets and have some drinks and maybe take some notes and if it was a weekend show, I’d write it up late on Sunday night to meet the Monday morning deadline. (I now write most reviews immediately afterwards.)

If you view it in terms of free entertainment, as I did, there’s no problem. You might even embrace your mediocrity as a writer because hey, it’s a hobby, right? You can impress your friends by getting your named crossed off the guestlist. Seeing bands for free and getting paid (miserably) for it - the dream, right? High fives!

After nearly two years, though, I could embrace my mediocrity no longer. You realise that publicists are quoting your published praise not because it’s good writing, but because your praise is so unashamedly hyperbolic that of course it’ll appear on the press release. Because at the time, as a ‘music writer’, I wasn’t sufficiently self-aware to realise that I was being so fucking immature.

This is not to say that a good writer can’t praise a band. I still nominate to review shows by bands whose music I’m familiar with, and usually fond of. I’m not sure how to define it, but I think that an important self-realisation has to take place before a music writer can put aside the urge to praise and describe, and instead rely on gut instincts and feelings to shape their work. Still the best advice I’ve received is from Andrew Ramadge, who I think of whenever I write about music. The most important question I have to answer: what does it feel like?

Returning to the Porcupine Tree review. It took me three or four hours to write, which is far longer than I’ve spent on any live review for Mess+Noise. In a way it feels like I’ve regressed, purely because of its length and my tendency to rely upon description instead of feel. As I’ve made clear, description without emotional engagement is for losers. There was some exposition about the potential hypocrisy of an internet-successful band disallowing the use of recording equipment, but as my first review for The Vine, I don’t feel that it’s particularly strong, or representative of my evolution as a writer.

Why did I submit it if I wasn’t 100% happy with the outcome? I believe it’s because I was thrown by the show, and didn’t know how to write it any other way. I hadn’t seen a serious rock ‘production’ like that in some time, and while I was clearly impressed by the scope of their performance, I perhaps allowed myself to take the easy way out. I allowed my standards as a writer to drop, and I think it shows.

Maybe I’m being over-cautious. Maybe I spent too long absorbed in a piece of writing that I can no longer tell whether it’s good or bad. (That happens sometimes.) What do you think? If you’ve read this far, I’d love your critical appraisal of my review, whether you’re familiar with Porcupine Tree or not.

Filed under Published Writing, Writing | Tags: andrew-ramadge, bloc-party, criticism, FasterLouder, Journalism, Mediocrity, Music, music-criticism, porcupine-tree, Published Writing, robert-forster, Street Press, the-vine, Writing | Comments (3)