“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

Columns

A column about a column you ask? Sounds rather presumptuous right? But I’m here to unravel my Yoda wisdom and lay down the essential ingredients in creating an irresistibly tasty column.

The fundamentals are like learning how to ride a bike. Some may take a while, wobbling around at first, some may pick it up straight away, and others, well, they should stick to walking.

But, before you hop onto that saddle, find a topic. It may sound obvious, but finding that killer story is a fine art and a carefully crafted piece of marketing.

At the end of the day, you are selling your column to your reader. So finding a topic is all about expressing something you are passionate about. No passion, no sale.

If you haven’t captured the reader from the very first line, you’ve lost the battle. Each section has to entertain and add fresh information. A little something called flair. Your first line should flaunt and tease the reader, enticing them to dig a little deeper.

As you step up the gears your writing should flow smoothly from paragraph to paragraph. Like the soothing velvet tones of the late Barry White. Each stanza should have the reader hanging onto every line, every word and every syllable.

Oh, and another important tip, stick to one tense. Flitting through the tenses will result in your idea getting lost in the headlights.

A pet hate of mine is reading something that is incorrect. Research is the key to solidifying your concept. The minute you misspell something or get your facts wrong, all power is lost.

If you have friends ask them to have a read, if not, I’m sure a stranger will do. Bringing in a fresh pair of eyes should help sort out those skid marks and pull your column back onto the path if you’ve lost your way.

If you want to play Judge Judy, step away from the keyboard immediately! In other words, don’t accuse or make suggestions about someone of ‘celebrity’ status. Yes you have an opinion and want to question things. But controversy isn’t the winning formula in the column business I’m afraid.

Think of a well-oiled chain, you want your column to run smoothly. It needs to have one consistent tone throughout.

If you are not the funny type, don’t try to be. If you’re writing about a serious topic, don’t take it light-heartedly!

If you’re addressing government cuts under Tory rule, political language is perfectly acceptable. But if you’re writing about summer festival fads, inserting short, but sweet witty lines is imperative. Cater to your audience, either ‘get down with the kids’ or address serious concerns with ‘adult’ language.

You MUST write with authority and consistency. Stretch Armstrong’s and Slap Bracelets are (sadly) a thing of the past. Readers want a strong and straight personality. Find your topic, fight your corner, and do it with conviction. After all, a column should ooze your personality and personify your passion on a subject.

Let me ask you this question; why do people still listen to the radio? The answer is simple. It’s the endearing personalities of each and every radio presenter. They make you feel comfortable and listeners resonate with the presenter; a friendly personality emits the mirage of friendship between on-air character and listener.

People love the ‘crazy goof ball’ who questions the current state of affairs, the maverick prepared to go a little against the grain. Be the person who’s behind that must-read column. There is a rebel in all of us and some people will point to your work as a reflection of their own opinions. Imagine that.

The importance of columns should never be undermined. Historian, Michael Schudson (Discovering the News: A Social History of America Newspapers) states that columns are: “journalism’s most important institutional acknowledgement that there were no longer facts”. This is your opportunity to take an idea and pedal with it.

If you can’t handle the heat, I’d forget the stabilisers. Column writing is as much an art as film, painting and music. It is a craft that nurtures natural ability and gives the writer a chance to sculpt their own opinions and influence others. If you believe you can embrace the pressure, get back on that bike and keep going.

Redraft, delete, rewrite. This is about taking those nuggets of inspiration and thoughts, persevering and perfecting. Then maybe, just maybe your voice can be heard all over the world and inspire a new way of thinking.

Would you choose to stand by and watch hundreds of defenceless creatures being killed?

Just 200 miles north of Scotland, on the Faroe Islands, this happens several times a year.

Inhabitants gather voluntarily to watch fishermen take the lives of hundreds of whales in a hunt called ‘the grind’. This literally translates to ‘whale murder’.

With films such as Free Willy so widely known, people tend to assume that those who slaughter these mammals are evil.

The islanders trap the whales with boats, steer them into the shallows and cut their spinal cords. The meat is then distributed for free throughout the community, as a way of providing food.

Even I can’t deny that on paper it looks like a very bloody and dramatic spectacle. So, I wasn’t completely surprised to learn that as the news hit the UK, the population were startled.

Within days of the footage and pictures being released, campaigners such as Campaign Whale and PETA immediately started rallying around to build up support to end the hunt. PETA states that ‘whales are highly intelligent creatures that feel pain and fear.’

In many countries whale shows are very popular tourist attractions, such as the Shamu show in SeaWorld, so I can comprehend that viewing their deaths could be a shock. However, who are we to dictate what people should and should not eat, when eating whale to the islanders, is like eating poultry or red meat to us?

What the critics fail to take on board is that the Faroese consider blubber and whale meat an essential food source. The grinds do not take place for ‘traditional Viking fun’ as claimed by Sea Shepherd, but a source of food for the community. 

They do not take place for any commercial gain and they have been eating it for over 430 years. Only 0.1% of the pilot whale population is killed each year and the fishermen only hunt the schools that swim close by to the island – unlike the majority of fishing done today.

In fact, the Office of Protected Resources (the headquarters program for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration) list ‘entanglement in fishing gear’ as the top threat to long-finned pilot whales – those killed in the grinds.

When put in front of you it may be alarming sight; the sea, blood red, but it is the most humane way to kill these small cetaceans. If we are to question the ethics of those on the Faroe Islands, should we not also be questioning the other killing methods across the world too?

I think people are forgetting that the world is full of slaughterhouses. Just because the vast majority of the killing takes place behind closed doors, doesn’t make it any better. If someone saw the death of the cow their steak came from, just before they were about to eat it, they may think twice.

The life that a whale has leading up to its end, is significantly greater than the lives of the majority of animals butchered in slaughterhouses today. In 2007, a Mercy For Animals investigator went undercover at one of the US’s largest poultry slaughterhouses to witness the conditions first hand.

During that time he revealed that birds with broken wings and legs, open wounds and large tumours were shackled upside down on the slaughter line. Workers punched, kicked, threw and mutilated live birds, tore eggs from their cloacae and ripped off their heads.

This is just one miniscule example of what goes on when workers think no-ones looking.

According to animal activists Sea Shepherd, the Faroese hunt is ‘arguably more barbaric and even more merciless’ than the dolphin slaughter that happens Taiji, Japan. Yet, a documentary called The Cove (2009) reveals significant differences.

The bottlenose dolphins in Taiji are not killed humanely, but by ‘death by spike’. They suffocate, drown or bleed to death, long after being stabbed with flensing knives, attached to bamboo poles. In comparison, the pilot whales which are killed in the Faroe Islands die in less than 30 seconds.

Stopping the fishermen who make a living from catching the whales, is like telling them to abandon their jobs. No-one has a right to do this. Due to the fact that the younger generation haven’t particularly developed a taste for whale meat, the tradition may die out naturally in time anyway.

We should not be victimising a minute population with ancient tradition, which on a wide scale, does little harm. Before we have any right to criticise others, we have to change ourselves.

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University dissertation

Paws for thought magazine

A magazine dedicated to working dogs

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