Journalist and blogger Linda Jones has tagged me in her meme about writing. I really rate Linda’s writing as well as her business acumen so I’m responding to the challenge (and it’s the perfect excuse to kickstart this sadly neglected blog, too).

Which words do you use too much in your writing?

I probably swear too much, certainly when blogging, tweeting or posting in forums. I try and keep commissioned pieces clean, though! I’m probably more guilty of writing over-long sentences, scattered liberally with commas to break them up. And I definitely overuse the ellipsis…

Which words do you consider overused in stuff you read?

Most tabloidese. The word “star” seems to be applied to anyone who’s come within sniffing distance of a TV studio and is guaranteed to get my back up.

What’s your favourite piece of writing by you?

I covered the trial of Paul Touvier when he was in the dock for crimes against humanity, as I was living in France at the time. I was the only foreign freelance journalist to get a press pass (and they were very scarce). My feature’s not available online but I’ll dig it out one day, scan it and post it on my website.

What blog post do you wish you’d written?

Lots! I follow so many fantastic blogs that are brimming with great writing, I’m not sure I could choose. I’m a massive fan of Benefit Scrounging Scum – her posts always resonate with me because she writes about the realities of living with a disability in such an accessible way. I wish I could laugh about my own, comparatively minor, disability in the same way she does about hers even while letting you know the seriousness of her situation.

Regrets, do you have a few? Is there anything you wish you hadn’t written?

I wish I’d never written for Fabulous (the magazine of News of the World). It was a very unhappy experience for me and I’ll never sell out for a high word rate again. I felt grubby afterwards and I learned the lesson that selling my personal experience for shekels is not worth it when the subs distort everything you wrote. Otherwise I try not to regret things. I’d rather learn from my mistakes and move on than dwell on them.

How has your writing made a difference? What do you consider your most important piece of writing?

Most of the stuff I’ve done over the years is not that important in the great scheme of things. I started out as a music journalist and I’ve also done a fair bit of TV reviewing. There have been ranty columns galore, too – amusing to read but hardly world-changing.

I’m really pleased with the stuff I’ve done on disability benefits as I know I’ve helped people directly by exposing some of the system’s anomalies. Around 20 years ago, I wrote regularly for foreign magazines on the rise of the far right in a post-Communist Europe – I’m a little bit proud that I helped expose a small bit of that to a wider audience. And, of course, my Touvier piece is the one that I consider my most important (see above).

Name three favourite words

Yikes! Wordsmith. Brandy.

…And three words you’re not so keen on

British National Party.

Do you have a writing mentor, role model or inspiration?

I’ve never had a mentor but thanks are due to my old friend Fritz, who first published me in his fanzine, Wrong Image, when I was a 15-year-old punk in the mid-1970s. I’d already decided I wanted to be a journalist but seeing my first articles sealed the deal for me. A huge nod also goes to Mel Young, who gave me my first proper break in 1978 at Edinburgh City Lynx.

I’m inspired by many, many writers – every journalist I admire is a far better writer than I could ever hope to be.

I did want Julie Burchill’s job when she was at the NME, though. And her subsequent salary. But I never actually wanted to be her.

What’s your writing ambition?

I’ve never been terribly ambitious, which is probably why I never replaced Burchill at the NME. I’m fairly sure I had the talent but I lacked the drive and still do. So as long as I can somehow keep making a reasonable living as a wordsmith, that’ll do me nicely. I may even sling another book together at some point…

Plug alert!  List any work you would like to tell your readers about:

I published my first book, Epilepsy The Essential Guide, in May 2009. I’ve had epilepsy myself since 1996 and I basically wrote the book I wanted to read when I was diagnosed but it wasn’t available. It’s selling well, has had good reviews and I know it’s already helped a few people, which is what I wanted to achieve with it.

In spring 2009, I collaborated with Linda Jones on TwitterTitters, which we did to raise money for Comic Relief while seeing if it was possible to a) create a book through Twitter and b) do it from scratch within a month. It was, but it gave me extra grey hairs. And sod it, I’d do it again!

Forthcoming this autumn, I’m one co-author (of around 250) of QFinance The Ultimate Resource, which is an encyclopedia on one of my specialist subjects – finance. It’s not dull, honest!

Tag time. Some colleagues I hope will also do the meme:

Dave Lee

Allie Dickinson

Sarah Hartley

Alison Gow

BendyGirl

The rules: If you have time to do this meme, then please link to my original, then link to three to five other bloggers and pass it on, asking them to answer your questions and link to you. You can add, remove or change one question as you go. You absolutely do not have to be what you may think of as a “published” or “successful” writer to respond to this meme, I hope people can take the time to reflect on what their blogging has brought them and how it has been useful to others.

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Did you know that one in six people in the UK has a disability of some sort? No? Neither did I until quite recently. It’s a shocking statistic, not so much because of the figure of 17%, but because disability is so underreported that when it does make the press people’s life stories become stereotyped and distorted. For example, we’re used to reading stories about soldiers returning from the frontline of duty, minus limbs. We rarely read of people who lost limbs for other reasons. Disability reporting tends to focus on a couple of quite narrow aspects – benefit cheats and the “brave”.

The benefits issue is particularly distressing. Most people with a disability rely on benefits as their sole means of income, meaning they struggle to get by and are forced to live below the poverty line. The few non-disabled who milk the system to claim money they are not entitled to are the ones used by the tabloids to splash “benefit cheats” headlines and used by the government as an excuse to tighten the rules further each time it wants to make savings. The reality is that around 80% of those claiming Disability Living Allowance will be refused on initial application even though they fit all the criteria for a claim.

As for “bravery”, it’s just part of the often patronising, often ignorant language used by the press, as well as the public at large. Just this week, someone described me as “suffering from” epilepsy while someone said my latest seizure must have been “traumatic” – neither of these terms are particularly accurate for the vast majority of people with epilepsy. Language is so often used carelessly to describe the disabled, with little thought given to how the disabled might prefer to be described. I’m not talking just about PC language, although quite the daftest thing I ever heard some years ago was about a memo circulating at a local council instructing workers to use the term “thought shower” instead of “brainstorm” for fear of offending those with epilepsy. The origins of this PC term may well be apocryphal, but it did spread far and wide into common usage. You know what’s really offensive? No one actually asked the 450,000 people in the UK who have epilepsy if they were offended by the term brainstorm. And you know what? We’re not. Probably because we’re too busy fighting for access to decent neurological services.

Today is Blogging Against Disablism Day – I invite you to click on the link and read what hundreds of disabled bloggers have to say about the reality of living with a disability. Read, and listen. And remember, you might know one of the one in six, or live next door to one of us.

I’m also really proud that Blogging Against Disablism Day coincides with the publication of my book, Epilepsy: The Essential Guide. If you’re very quick, you can hear me live on BBC Radio Manchester this morning at 11am, talking about epilepsy and living with a disability. It’s live-streamed on the internet.

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Freelance journalist Nick Clayton got the boot last week for blogging. His firing has attracted a lot of media attention and he’s written up his experience on his own blog. Read and learn what a storm in a teacup it is – not for him but for The Scotsman.

No doubt Nick will be keeping the world posted as to what happens next, now that he’s consulting the NUJ. His sacking raises many questions about the freedom of journalists to write where, how, as and when they choose. Within the blogosphere, several high profile bloggers have lost their jobs, Petite Anglaise being one famous example. But these are people who were staffers blogging about their jobs anonymously. And who unwittingly transgressed unwritten company codes about the boundaries between work and private life.

Nick is a freelance journalist – self-employment should mean it’s entirely up to him to blog about what he likes, when he likes. Newspapers have embraced blogging, some more than others, but pretty much all of them recognise the important medium it has become. Most papers have blogs written by their staff. Very few seem to have any kind of policy on what their staff may blog about (judging purely on all the chatter doing the rounds on the net in the past few days), or even whether such policies apply to freelances under contract.

What’s puzzling in Nick’s case is why he was fired. He didn’t attack The Scotsman. He was only commenting on something the paper had already reported. The Scotsman is not doing itself any favours right now. It’s not taking calls about Nick’s firing from the NUJ or the media who want to hear the paper’s side of the story. And it’s made itself look rather petty. Which it has been.

What happens to Nick next may well determine how the landscape lies for other freelance journalists who blog, even those of us living from pitch to pitch rather than on a contract or two. It would be awful to think that a freelance fashion writer, say, was refused further commissions for blogging that a company’s latest range was poor, because the mag she writes for takes advertising from that company. Where does it end? Will it mean all freelances will have to sign some kind of disclaimer determining what they may blog about?

I suspect very many of us will be watching developments very closely.

I hope Nick is reinstated. And I hope we will all continue to enjoy the freedom to blog as we choose without fear of losing work as a result.

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