Write Now: Unpaid journalism - why I'm against it

Should I write for free?

It’s the question all young journalists ask themselves, particularly those who haven’t yet found a satisfying full-time job.

It’s a prerequisite these days, isn’t it? You graduate, get a job in an unrelated field, write for love, not money (for the many magazines and websites that fuel themselves on unpaid writers), and if you’re talented and ambitious enough, you bag yourself a full-time role after a few years. 

Well, that’s the story that so many of these “freegan” publications sell to young people desperate to get into journalism. But journalism is a job, not a hobby – and does a portfolio full of unpaid bylines actually lead to a career? 

It depends on the individual. A trained young journalist, a few years into her career, told me: “I’m still taking on a lot of free work due to the sheer scarcity of opportunity... I do enjoy it, but I think people get past the point of no return with regards to working for little or for free.” Another agreed: “The exciting perks of journalism more than compensated for the lack of payment… After a while, though, it all becomes a bit tiresome. Last weekend I spent my two days off writing nonstop for unpaid deadlines. It’s very demoralising.” 

Read the rest in IdeasMag...

New story - "But I'm an Artist"

Here's a new story, published today in Notes from the Underground. It's about a young couple who dream of becoming artists and moving to Berlin.

Also, after the story, I write a bit about my favourite authors, books, films etc...

Hope you enjoy!

Beautiful blue

Most beautiful magazine cover I've seen in a while. International Klein blue? Such a wonderful colour.

Ira Glass's advice for young creatives

This is lovely.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Short story: "Management"

Rather pleased to have a short story published in this month's Untitled Books - a great literary website I've admired for a while. The story is called "Management" and it's about office politics. Read it and tell me what you think.

Twitter scandals

I won't add to the hubbub – I'll just direct you to this exchange between Prior and Belize in Tony Kushner's Angels in America:

How to be a bad writer - Langston Hughes

Nicked this from This Recording's great round-up of writing advice from legendary writers. This was my favourite, by the wonderful poet Langston Hughes (pictured)... Numbers 1 and 5, I think, are especially important.

How to be a bad writer (in ten easy lessons):

1. Use all the clichés possible, such as "He had a gleam in his eye," or 'Her teeth were white as pearls."

2. If you are a Negro, try very hard to write with an eye dead on the white market - use modern stereotypes of older stereotypes - big burly Negroes, criminals, low-lifers, and prostitutes.

3. Put in a lot of profanity and as many pages as possible of near pornography and you will be so modern you pre-date Pompeii in your lonely crusade toward the bestseller lists. By all means be misunderstood, unappreciated, and ahead of your time in print and out, then you can be felt-sorry-for by your own self, if not the public.

4. Never characterize characters. Just name them and then let them go for themselves. Let all of them talk the same way. If the reader hasn't imagination enough to make something out of cardboard cut-outs, shame on him!

5. Write about China, Greence, Tibet or the Argentine pampas — anyplace you've never seen and know nothing about. Never write about anything you know, your home town, or your home folks, or yourself.

6. Have nothing to say, but use a great many words, particularly high-sounding words, to say it.

7. If a playwright, put into your script a lot of hand-waving and spirituals, preferably the ones everybody has heard a thousand times from Marion Anderson to the Golden Gates.

8. If a poet, rhyme June with moon as often and in as many ways as possible. Also use thee's and thou's and 'tis and o'er , and invert your sentences all the time. Never say, "The sun rose, bright and shining." But rather, "Bright and shining rose the sun.'

9. Pay no attention really to the spelling or grammar or the neatness of the manuscript. And in writing letters, never sign your name so anyone can read it. A rapid scrawl will better indicate how important and how busy you are.

10. Drink as much liquor as possible and always write under the presence of alcohol. When you can't afford alcohol yourself, or even if you can, drink on your friends, fans, and the general public.

If you are white, there are many more things I can advise in order to be a bad writer, but since this piece is for colored writers, there are some thing I know a Negro just will not do, not even for writing's sake, so there is no use mentioning them.

Happy New Year

Fernando Pessoa

I am in love with this beautiful poem by the great Portuguese poet - the first stanza makes an appearance in a short story I'm working on today, which is set in the north of Brazil... Enjoy.


Countless lives inhabit us.
I don’t know, when I think or feel,
Who it is that thinks or feels.
I am merely the place 
Where things are thought or felt.

I have more than just one soul.
There are more I’s than I myself.
I exist, nevertheless,
Indifferent to them all.
I silence them: I speak.

The crossing urges of what
I feel or do not feel
Struggle in who I am, but I
Ignore them. They dictate nothing
To the I I know: I write.




In Portuguese:


Vivem em nós inúmeros;
Se penso ou sinto, ignoro
Quem é que pensa ou sente.
Sou somente o lugar
Onde se sente ou pensa.

Tenho mais almas que uma.
Há mais eus do que eu mesmo.
Existo todavia
Indiferente a todos.
Faço-os calar: eu falo.

Os impulsos cruzados
Do que sinto ou não sinto
Disputam em quem sou.
Ignoro-os. Nada ditam
A quem me sei: eu escrevo.

Our Love is Here to Stay

This is possibly my favourite Gershwin song - though it's hard to pick, because I like almost everything George and Ira did.

Posting it just because it makes a cameo in a story I'm finishing off today, which is about a music-crazy friendship between two teenage girls.

This version is my favourite, by Gene Kelly in An American in Paris. One of my favourite films of all time, and certainly the most underrated musical of the Golden Era... Who needs sex scenes when you can dance like Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron? Don't even get me started on the 20-minute ballet at the end. Just watch the film - it's perfect.