Are you a college student in some kind of writing major — journalism, PR, screenwriting or fiction — and think you can write? Show me. BRING IT.
The evil secret to all writing? Editing.
I had a great time with two accidental and informal interns: Lauren Palazzo, a goddess of publicity on the East Coast, and Alex Corey, a journalistic muffin of stud on the West Coast.
So I’m turning this into a formal and official Thing, maybe because it warms my cold Swedish heart to give talented young writers good clips, good editing and a little boost toward a job and career that doesn’t involve hairnets or selling insurance.
What are the requirements?
- You DON’T have to show up 8 to 5 every day, make copies or fetch coffee, because you’re doing this from far, far away, via the Series of Tubes, and I don’t care if you’re orbiting Mars as long as your internets work.
- You DO have to write circles around your competitors and have a hunger to write better, because you understand everybody needs to be edited, and seeing your drafts get riddled with red ink doesn’t put you in therapy.
- You DON’T need to do this for official credit.
- You DO need to write two posts a week for whatever semester or quarter system you use, and these posts can’t be recycled term papers or diary entries from your blog about the best bars in Madison, Wisconsin.
If you’re not clear about the topics covered on this blog, read this post: Seven Days, Seven Categories — this is not a coincidence
How to apply:
Step 1: Pick out ONE writing sample, the Best Thing You Ever Wrote in History.
Step 2: Think of TWO story ideas that you could write the heck out of until there was NO HECK LEFT.
Step 3: Dream up THREE ways you’d improve this silly blog with new weekly features, WordPress magic or SEO nonsense and analytics that neither of us will understand, but we’ll pretend anyway.
Step 4: Pick one of FOUR ways of contacting me — the Twitter @speechwriterguy, emailing a resume and your clip to guybergstrom@gmail.com, creating some kind of infographic or Tumblr thing about your epic skills or posting a haiku about yourself in the comments. Poems can be terrible, but haikus rock.
Also: If you’re out of college, or in a different country where people don’t “go to college” and are instead “at university,” and know somebody amazing who’d be a perfect fit, please forward this post to them, retweet it or share it using smoke signals and such.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
