The Morris Journalism Academy

Before I left for overseas in August, I signed up to do a freelance journalism course with The Morris Journalism Academy.

It’s taken me until now to start doing some work with the course due to lack of motivation and jet lag mixed in with laziness.  I have 5 envelopes with course assignments sitting on my desk, one for each month, and so far I have only opened 1.  I hope during my couple of weeks off over Christmas that I get into the work and stop procrastinating.

Being a journalist and learning how to be one isn’t going to come easily to me.  I’m self-opinionated, love to give advice and options, and according to what I’ve read so far, that is a big no-no with journalism.  It seems no one is interested in the opinions of a journalist, only the news they share and the names they managed to get the news from.  Perhaps I won’t succeed, as I like to draw from my own experiences in life, and those of people around me, rather than interview strangers.  I have little trust in most people I don’t know. so writing what they tell me is the truth wouldn’t sit easily unless I knew, in my heart, that what they said was true.

I’m not overly concerned about success with the course.  It’s just another stepping stone into another area of writing that I know little about.  I write articles but from what I’ve read in the course, my articles aren’t articles because they are based on my thoughts and opinions.  Sounds confusing?  Ah well, life can be as confusing as we like to make it, so I intend not to bother making confusion.  However, I will give this a go because it’s all part of educating myself and will only be beneficial, that’s for sure.

My chosen field is of course the Internet, and safety online for children and adults, is my number one aim.  My tutor seems to feel that my subject has the basis of making for some good reading, and should be interesting to a wide range of publishers.  That’s yet to be seen.  I started my work in this area when there wasn’t much being said about the Internet and danger.  No one then was interested, and most people considered I was out to cause problems where there were none.  Of course this accusation has been dispelled now as there are many stories originating from the Internet and few of them are good ones.  I would have liked to be part of the wave that started with the big stories about the Internet and danger, but I was a bit ahead of the ship and my raft sank.  Such is life.  No matter how it happened, the stories needed to be told and those that had better ways to tell them beat me to the line.

I’ll let you all know as the months roll by how I am coping with the course and whether or not I’m having any success.  It would be nice to sell a story or an article to a magazine or newspaper, but I’m not losing any sleep over that not happening.  I don’t sleep that well anyhow J

A very Merry Christmas and a bright and happy New Year to everyone who reads my work.  I have enjoyed the messages and reviews that have been posted, and thank all of you for taking the time to read and then write to me.  I look forward to the New Year and hopefully gaining back my motivation to get to work and start writing.  The rewrite/edit of Secrets, Lies & Chat is almost complete and I intend to relaunch it as an eBook, with a new cover and title.  The price will ensure that anyone with a credit card will be able to buy and download the book cheaply.  I hope that by doing this I can reach a larger audience and share my life with people who will hopefully learn about the Internet and the pitfalls that I dallied around in for a few years.

Take care until next time.