The Blues of an Entertainment Writer
If writing is your ‘joy of living’ as wise Etemesi puts it, then entertainment writing is a cool option to consider. Well that’s if you are looking for something different from trees, cool breezes, normal people and life’s daily struggles.
In this other world you deal with bloated egos, sensitive personalities, amazing work, dumbfounding work, the exciting and the boring of events and the weirdest stories. Suffice to say it is never monotonous and thus it is not always summer and spring at one point you always know WINTER IS COMING.
Welcome to the entertainment writer’s blues. The most frustrating of all is when it’s all freezing story wise. No news to write about and the fillers are all taken up by your colleagues. You scroll and call and get nothing to the videos and still naught! Such moments strike when you are in no frame of mind to compile a list and can only look in envy as your colleague develops a sudden gift to form and justify opinion penning one after the other.
Closer to the freeze is when all celebrities are on their best behavior. Mmmh nope, we don’t want to promote the sleazy stuff celebrities do but the higher pedestal they occupy in society makes them pretty good to laugh at when they slide. Don’t start the condemnation all we look for is some dirt not blood as the mainstream media does with their mantra ‘if it bleeds it leads’. It always helps to have someone who believes all publicity is good; at least they make us appreciate the saintly ones more.
Finally there is an award recognizing the best entertainment writers and blogs are being considered. That’s a fresh welcome in an industry with different metrics for knowing whether you have arrived, as a voice that matters that is. Among the metrics is the number of suits you have attracted, celebrities suffering from selective amnesia who have beef with you, the number of groupies you attract and the artistes who have blocked you off as well as those who are seeking you; I told you it’s a crazy world indeed.
The painful moment is the time censorship affects your story. It is a misconception that entertainment blogs do not care for censorship, we do it is just not uniformly applied and we are grateful for that. The problem is when you get the a story, with all the ingredients of ‘virality ’ is declared unpublished and you can only sit and watch as another blog flies with the story and you are left praying to the bones of your grandfathers .
Finally the days when you can’t just get what you want to write down. It’s not a block and it is not a lack of stuff to write, it’s like you woke up stupid or your brain and hands are up to some mischief close to a KNUT call to arms. These are moments that make this work normal and, it is not a calling it is the ether of life itself.
