Hello expat-blog readers,
I'm a 28 year old English male and I'm looking to start a new free newspaper for Barcelona a la BCN Mes or Metropolitan. However I don't want to fill it with boring or pretentious articles, but with fiction. The theme would be Barcelona and there would be space for articles and columns, but the main focus would be to populate each edition with short stories.
To this end I need writers and collaborators for this project. People with a literary bent, who enjoy writing and creating stories and like to express themselves through written word. The language doesn't have to be English, the stories can be about anything, but I would like to retain a theme relating to the city and locality that we live in.
When I read a copy of Metropolitan, I want to rip the pages apart as every article is so bland and boring and entirely written to service the interests of the boring people who write it. Who wants to read 2,000 words about picking grapes in Catalunya. 200, maybe. It is consistently atrocious.
And then there is BCN Week, which is more interesting but still ultimately filled with articles that ache with all the esoteric coolness that they think they possess. Just so hip and trendy, giving the proles of Barcelona a tantalising glimpse into some of the cool shit that happens in this city. How nice of them.
The stories for this paper don't need to be entirely fictional, but simply an intriguingly written account of some event or incident in the writer's life, daily or otherwise, in Barcelona. Or they could be entirely fictional and about space dinosaurs revolting against their lesbian zombie masters. For the right writers there could be space for an opinion column or two.
I don't want the paper to fall into the same breed as the other free papers, with forgettable articles and then some pages on “what's on”, upcoming festivals and events, cool restaurants and trendy bars. But on the other hand I can't do this on my own and I need a team of writers each with their own ideas to contribute and collaborate.
So, if you're a writer, if you want a platform to express yourself, if you like fiction, and if you want to be part of a project that will take up a lot of time and isn't very likely to pay any money, please reply to this anuncio.
Your friend,
Walter
[email protected]
Ps. The project will also require technically minded people, such as artists and designers, web designers, newspaper makers, etc.
Looking for fiction writers to collaborate on a new free paper
So far my responses have only been a little bit cooler than lukewarm so i'm going to copy this message i wrote to a girl who expressed interest but doubt about whether she could write.
I'm not looking for professional writers but normal people who can write and are keen.
Have you ever tried writing? Think about this, for example:
What do you like? what are you interests?
Secondly, how long have you been in Barcelona? Why are you here? Where do you live? What are your impressions? What have you really liked? What have you hated? What has been weird? What do you think of the people? What places do you like? What's been your best expereince? what's been your worst?
I'm looking for people to write these kinds of recollections/reflections/opinions/impressions. It's proving very hard to find 'writers', i'm finding, and i think the problem is that the people i'm looking for don't think of themselves as 'writers'. But anyone who's reasonably educated and has a good level of written English could write what i'm looking for.
I don't want articles on some festival, some artistic/cultural bullshit, some journalistic/reporter shite on some new development from the Catalan parliament, i want normal people with an interesting voice to write what they think about Barcelona. How they've found it. Some account of bizarre events and people on Barceloneta beach. Some high-octane run-in with the parasite/thieving underclass in Ciutat Vella. Something on the weirdness of the locals. I'd also like some people to write short stories as well, but the former is equally or more important.
In a sense i'm looking to build a mosaic of peoples' impressions of Barcelona, admittedly a guiri perspective. I want to pepper these impressions with short stories, opinions, some other stuff to add variety. I want to make it an interesting yet familiar read, and i don't want it to be fucking boring or niche (well, i want it to be guiri-niche, but not niche-niche).
So think about what i've written and think about about whether you could write something for this project.
Your sensei,
Walter
I think one of the issues is that these days anyone who wants to write for free can just put up a blog. I've seen a lot of "write for my newspaper/magazine/book/website except I won't pay you" posts in many expat and travel forums and this is almost always the response that people post.
Maybe you'll get lucky but I thought I'd warn you that this might be part of why you're not finding any takers.
Well, i've had a fair few replies, ranging from people who want to do the website or the graphics or other visual stuff, to interest from people who want to write as well, apart from they want to write in Spanish, which is okay but not primarily what i'm looking for. First of all i need a team of people who can write the content.
It's true that anyone can write their own blog but what i'm proposing is something real, that people will hold, that will come to them in their hands somewhere in Barcelona, not buried away on the internet amid a trillion like-minded enterprises. There's a lot of interest in the project, of being part of something and not just a username in an online community. It's just a matter of finding the right people. And I've only been looking for a week.
What's more, there's a gaping, yearning chasm for something like what i'm proposing. Metropolitan is gash, BCN Week is now BCN Mes, Barcelona Connect is mostly a listings thing. No one seriously reads this shit. You get the right talent together, produce an daring and humorous newspaper that isn't less interesting than the Easyjet in-flight magazine, make it familiar and relevant and some of the apparently 120,000 English speakers in this city will read it. Then momentum builds, readership builds, advertisers think 'dude, we gotta get a slice of this shit' and then we're all very happy and proud of ourselves and the world will be a better place.
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