Archive for ◊ March, 2009 ◊

31 Mar 2009 Harlan Coben
Author: Mridu Khullar Relph |  Category: Life, Love, Writing  | Tags:  | One Comment

From The Promise by Harlan Coben:

There was an old joke about being left on a deserted island with an editor. You are starving. All you have left is a glass of orange juice. Days pass. You are near death. You are about to drink the juice when the editor grabs the glass from your hand and pees into it. You look at him, stunned. “There,” the editor says, handing you the glass. “It just needed a little tweaking.”

If you don’t know this already, I’m a huge Harlan Coben fan. His new book Long Lost is out today. And check out this interview on the Today Show.

30 Mar 2009 Ghostwriting for the Stars, and You Have 140 Characters
Author: Mridu Khullar Relph |  Category: Life, Love, Writing  | Tags: ,  | 8 Comments

“When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May Be Lurking,” says Noam Cohen in the New York Times.

50 Cent uses one. Britney Spears does, too. And the article goes on to name several people who do, and others who won’t, use ghost twitterers to connect with their fans. And before you go making fun of these twitterers, consider what you’d do if you were offered the job.

I put my unusually large foot in my unusually large mouth by saying things like, “Oh, that’s hilarious. Now the Queen has a twitterer? He must be a huge hit with the ladies— hello, I’m the Royal Twitterer” only to find out that a couple of people I know have been asked to twitter for the stars. And they’ve taken the job.

When they were teaching brevity in Berkeley, they weren’t thinking about Twitter, huh?

Anyway, my personal philosophy is that I wouldn’t take the job. If I ever come close, you have permission to shoot me, I told a friend. But in all seriousness, I’m a journalist and while the definitions of that may be changing, there are some traditional ideas I’ll hang on to, thank you very much.

Twittering for myself, well, I haven’t quite figured out how I feel about it. I joined fairly early on, in July 2008, and decided that I’d post an update once a day, like I do with my blog. But I realized pretty quickly that not only did I not like the medium, but that the endless chatter is super annoying.

Especially when some people actually post things like, “Goodnight tweeps. See you tomorrow” night after night. Every night. Yeah, kill me now. (But please, will you explain the purpose of that tweet before you do?)

Because I don’t like giving up on things (and people) before at least making an effort to understand them, I invited over a popular and well-respected social media expert who often gives seminars on the topic, and quizzed her on Twitter.

“You have to follow the right people,” she said. “You can get so much good information about a certain topic if you follow an expert. For instance, you could be the go-to India person. People would know that for news on what’s happening in India, you’re the person to follow. People follow me because they want the latest on what’s happening in social media.”

I liked that idea. Be scared, BBC. Be very very scared.

And so, as soon as she left, I immediately logged on to Twitter and started following this social media expert. Her next tweet, and I kid you not, was about how she was stopping on her way from a meeting to pick up food at a restaurant.

Sigh.

I’m not giving up yet, but I’m still waiting to hear what the big deal is.

So, Twitter. Positives and negatives. Discuss.

29 Mar 2009 Today’s Public Service Announcement Brought to You by . . .
Author: Mridu Khullar Relph |  Category: Life, Love, Writing  | Tags: , ,  | 3 Comments

Erik Sherman, an independent writer and photographer who has been published in the New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, Newsweek Japan, Fortune, Inc, Fortune Small Business, the Financial Times, Advertising Age, Saveur, US News & World Report, and Continental.

When some moron who thinks you were born yesterday suggests this kind of bullshit, because there is no other word for it, say this:

Don’t tell me about getting exposure to a bunch of deadbeat bums like you. Don’t tell me that I can get enough money for hours of my work to buy a pack of gum. Don’t tell me that you might pay me at some time in the future. Pay me for the work you’re asking me to do or go fuck yourself, because I’m certainly not going to let you fuck me.

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Read the whole thing. It’s brilliant.

I highly recommend subscribing to Erik’s blog. Not only because he’s an all-round fab person, but also because he’s one of the very few people I know who are good at the business side of freelance journalism.

28 Mar 2009 Is That a Bruise I See On Your Ego?
Author: Mridu Khullar Relph |  Category: Life, Love, Writing  | Tags:  | 2 Comments

Some days, I feel less like a journalist and more like a door-to-door salesperson. Today, I had the equivalent of three doors rudely slammed in my face. It’s on days like these that I have to remind myself that rejections are not a reflection on my worth as a person, or even as a journalist.

I’ll get over it in time. For now, pass the chocolate, please.

27 Mar 2009 One Percent
Author: Mridu Khullar Relph |  Category: Life, Love, Writing  | Tags: ,  | 4 Comments

Then I remember something a friend said about how we’re only really able to control 1 percent of what goes on in our lives. So we should try and focus on that instead of driving ourselves crazy about the remaining 99 percent. I set about to control my 1 percent.

I write.

- From an article I wrote (Discovering Ghana, ELLE)

26 Mar 2009 New York, New Jersey, New Delhi
Author: Mridu Khullar Relph |  Category: Life, Love, Writing  | Tags: , ,  | 14 Comments

I’ve been waking up every day with the biggest smile on my face.

In December last year, Sam and I decided that it would be better for our personal lives if we moved to New York and lived there for the next three years. As much as we both love India, there’s no denying that as an Indian woman dating a British man, there are constant annoyances such as disapproving glares from middle-aged aunties who don’t even know us, bad service at restaurants, and ignorant people who assume that because I’m with a white guy, I have no moral values. There are the bigger problems, too, including complete rejection from family members and friends, most of whom have now come around and started taking us seriously.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been planning, saving, researching, and talking to people about setting ourselves up in New York. Sam gave up his apartment in India, got a five-year journalist visa, and I hired a lawyer and started looking into how much all this was going to cost.

In the three months leading up to March, I was very excited. But I was also very nervous. Could we afford this? Where would we live? It was not lost on us that while we both make a good living and would be able to live comfortably in New York, with the same money in India, we could buy a home, think about investing, and travel frequently.

Other questions came up as well: Would we ever go back to India? Would I really only be able to see my parents once a year? Could I even get a work visa for America as a freelancer?

And more importantly, what the heck was I going to write?

Friends say it is glaringly obvious but that they didn’t want to say it at the time: my passion lies in working in the developing world. That’s not to say that there aren’t important stories to be told here in America, but they’re not my stories to tell. That’s not what drives me. Even as we were discussing New York, I kept talking about the reporting I would do in South America, how I could fly back to India every year, and the concepts I had in mind. I spent days in mourning after having to turn down a potential book deal about a story I’ve reported on in India.

While I was super excited about moving to New York, I was not excited about the work I would do there.

Two weeks before Sam was scheduled to arrive in New York, he called me early in the morning and told me to get online for a video chat.

“Are you happy about New York?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“What about India?”

“Er… do you want to stay in India? You can tell me.”

“Um… yes. I do. I want to stay in India.”

“Oh, thank God! Me too!”

(That’s the simplified version. The complicated version included a long conversation that ended with us jumping up and down. Well, one of us, anyway.)

So I’ve been lining up work, speaking with editors (“No, that’s right. New Delhi, not New York”), and collecting assignments. I got a few this week, which means I’ll be traveling around the country again almost as soon as I arrive in Delhi in May.

I’m going back home. And I’ve been waking up with the biggest smile on my face.

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