Dear Editor. Is That By the Hour, Or By the Word. Louis Shalako.

 

I already have a part-time job making pizza dough...

Louis Shalako.

Dear editor,

 

You are looking for free-lance reporters.

After thirty years on disability, I don’t have much of a resume. I ‘retire’ off of ODSP in August. The CPP will be minimal, although OAS and GIS are intended to bring a senior citizen up to an ‘income floor’, below which they are theoretically not supposed to fall, in terms of income.

(If the rent goes up, or the car blows up, that is another story.)

What I do have is 24 books, mostly fiction. I have hundreds of short stories and novellas.

Every bit of that was self-published.

That doesn’t necessarily prove that I can’t write or that I am a failure as an author.

My short stories have been published in Estonian, Dutch, Greek, German, Portuguese and two dialects of Spanish in addition to English.

When I published my latest novel on Google Play, I saw that people could take an existing ebook, and using AI, turn that into an auto-narrated audiobook. So then I spent about five months, and did 135 titles as audiobooks. It’s not as easy as you might think. You do have to listen to every word, otherwise ‘John read a book’ might become ‘John reed a book’, in order to fix that, I had to take the ‘a’ out of read. I knew it would be a big job. I put my head down, very, very humbly, and did the work.

The machine will pronounce ‘John red a book’ just fine, and since it’s not text, it’s not a typo—the listener will never see the text. Also, John sat down to read a book works just fine with AI. There is a learning curve, and I did have to accept that one voice might pronounce Louis just fine, but not Shalako. Another voice mangled Louis, but came a lot closer with the Shalako name. Louis Shalako is a pen-name, and I have my reasons for doing that. Some voices are British, some American, there are one or two Aussie voices and then some young voices from India. For my purposes, I stuck with the more western-sounding voices, although I did give an Indian female a try in a story by one of my pen-names, of which I have five.

I did study Radio, Television and Journalism Arts at Lambton College, under the tutelage of Geoff Lane, John Murray, John Hus, and others. I returned to study ‘Art Fundamentals’, a bit of a bird course; and yet at the same time, some grounding in graphic arts and other pictorial arts have been helpful in the sense that I did all my own book covers. I formatted all of my own works. I edited them to the best of my ability, for spelling, style and errors of logic.

Stella, my negotiator...

***

Okay, down to the nuts and bolts.

Your house style may be a little different than mine. I would have to play by your rules, no cussing and swearing, no negative characterizations. To draw conclusions about a person’s intentions or motivations, to put thoughts in their head or words in their mouth is not particularly good journalism. Drawing conclusions is not impossible, one would hope it is the readers drawing the conclusions.

We can lead them to the water—it is up to them whether they want to drink or not.

You may not be comfortable with me using a pen-name, and I might not be comfortable using my real name.

I am sure that you have time sheets, expense and mileage forms, I’m sure there is room for agreement, assuming I had to drive to Wyoming for a meeting of county council for example. It is a business, after all.

I know you’re not writing fiction and that good journalism has rules, some of which are still unwritten. You’re not big on italics and bold, and ‘tricky’ writing, writing which might impress but somehow serves less well. We take the ego out of the equation. A professional journalist does not inject himself or herself into the story.

While I’m sure some work could be done from home, you do have a newsroom. I would very much like to see your newsroom and meet everyone. You will be surprised to know that I am still a bit shy. When I worked as a sports editor at the Delhi News Record, it was 140 miles from home. They had a dress code. I took it seriously enough, in that I wore a sport jacket, a shirt and a tie, nice slacks, not jeans, and shiny black shoes. (My mother, armed with her trusty credit card, took it very seriously indeed.) Yes, I carried steno pads and a camera. In a town of 1,400 people, no one had a clue who this guy was—I was the news, in a sense, but at the very least, I did not know anyone. I did not have friends in that town. I could be, or become, what I needed to be in order to do the job.

I didn’t have to worry about my friends laughing at me, and I didn’t have to worry about people who didn’t like me for whatever reason, picking away and carping away and disparaging everything I did. The people in Delhi essentially took me at face value. That is the new guy at the newspaper—and fair enough.

After a while, they get used to looking at you, and they can at least read your words in the paper and make their own assessment. All of a sudden, everyone in town knows your name.

Some of my concerns include: would I need a high-end phone, and a high-end phone plan, in order to do the work. My phone has call and text, and it costs $28.25 per month.

Would I need my own camera. I have a Nikon camera, it’s not very good, with a fixed lens and built-in flash.

Do you have any particular dress code? Shiny blue suits may not be entirely necessary these days, although there is probably a time and a place for it—

My hearing is not always very good. The phone is fine, I can turn it up and jam it up to my ear, although when the other party is on speaker-phone it can get a bit choppy, due to wind noise, music, or them turning their face away as we talk. In person, in a room, it can be a little frustrating for all concerned. I’m not deaf and I don’t need hearing aids. It’s just wax—to get the ears flushed out is $50.00 a pop and it’s not covered by OHIP. I am also pretty useless without the reading glasses…Every so often, I wonder if I am suffering from irritable bowel syndrome...’nuff said.

As a free-lance writer, presumably I would be an ‘independent sub-contractor’, responsible for making all my own contributions for CPP, OHIP, WSIP or whatever Workmen’s Comp is called these days. Presumably I would be responsible for saving enough to pay my own taxes, for example.

Would we be paying by the hour, the story, or the word.

Exactly how much time and training would I get, bearing in mind it has been forty years since I actually worked in the industry. If I had a desk in your newsroom, would it be equipped with a proper desktop computer, with a proper keyboard and mouse. Would the screen be as large as possible, would there be decent speakers and a good printer for the odd occasion such things might be useful. Would it be a very comfortable and professional chair. I think we can assume you have a coffee-maker, and a big box of hyphens and asterisks laying around…

I’m much better in the mornings. Afternoons are not a deal-breaker, bearing in mind I have a part-time job and I am not looking for full-time employment. Evenings, I don’t know. For an important story we would have to take that on a case-by-case basis.

I already have a part-time job making pizza dough, so that is a consideration...

Thank you for listening.

 

Louis

END

Louis Shalako has books and stories available from Google Play in ebook and audiobook format.

See his works on ArtPal.

Thank you for reading.

Editor's Note. I'm sorry, kid, we just can't use you. You have the #wrong_attitude