Baby writer in 2004.

WRITING | Or, how to grow your writing career?

Lol. Grow your writing career? Sure. Just work for free for a year or more.

Just kidding. Please don’t do that! Don’t do any of this. Don’t follow in my footsteps. Though I was quite successful as a baby journalist in the mid-aughts, it was a terrible gig. It damaged my mental and physical health and was nightmarish to live through, despite the supposed impressiveness of the job.

“Paying your dues” is a bullshit concept designed by greedy corporations who want to steal your labour and make a profit off you. Please, young writing hopefuls who may be out there reading this: learn from my mistakes. Working for free hurts other workers in your industry and is a recipe for burnout. Publications who ask writers to work for free are evil and care nothing for your well-being or career. Don’t trust them.

2018: By the time 2004 drew to a close, I’d been quietly recruited by and hired to work at Dose.

It was to be a new Canwest Global Communications Corporation publication, still in the planning stages, pitched to me as a “daily youth magazine” called Dose.

I continued to work my day job at the photo desk of the Vancouver Sun (owned at that time by the same aforementioned parent company, Canwest, now defunct after bankruptcy in 2009), but because I was already involved in the launch-planning and pitching going on for Dose, I stopped writing at the Sun. I didn’t have time. (My first task for Dose turned out to be to produce 50 pitches, a paragraph each, in a single day, so it was lucky that I had a couple months away from writing to build up some ideas.) My last piece was an environmentally-focused holiday gift guide.

Sun staffers, many of whom still work there today, knew I was moving to Dose, and often teased me about Dose.

Older reporters, in particular, said it sounded like I’d be writing for The Clap (or “Gonorrhea daily”). I didn’t mind. I was proud to be moving on to a full-time writing job. Also, I expected (and was explicitly told) I’d be producing the same sort of entertainment-focussed things I had at the Sun. Things like (music pieces and concert or album reviews, book reviews, light commentary pieces), but with a younger audience in mind, and therefore more room for snark and personality.

Not true, but whatever. More on that later.

Having amassed a solid collection of print clips, I was ready to start being paid to write.

Dose felt like a huge opportunity.

On my last day at the Sun (February 4th, 2005, after I’d already begun working full time for Dose from home) my coworkers were kind. They sent me off with minor fanfare and a front-page-mock-up mini-roast, shown below. I feel like there are some interesting little barbs in this joke-page they created that give a little insight into how I was always vaguely resented at the Sun for having been a nepotistic hire, (which is fair, and which I certainly understand).

Why did I even do this?

Though I never wanted to be a journalist, by this time, more than four years after my first newsroom gig, I had entirely put aside thoughts about what work might make me happy and what I really wanted.

The allure of continuing to see my name in print was strong. I thought it would prove something about me. Maybe people I hadn’t liked, or who hadn’t been kind to me might see it and be jealous. And it felt easy – the writing, I mean – I could reel off a dumb newspaper story in no time, and I never missed a deadline. If I had a concert to attend at 8 p.m., I’d turn in my story at 11 p.m. The money was decent and the whole thing made me feel like a grown up. I was a professional journalist, thankyouverymuch, and I’d built up a nice little façade of confidence. Still, I was secretly nervous. Dose had hired me (and all the writers) on limited 9-month contracts and I knew I’d have to prove myself.

I remember obsessively thinking, I can do this. I can totally do this, which alone may tell you that I was at least a little bit worried that I couldn’t.

A light roasting never hurt anyone.