By Tomás M. Creamer
Although I am not doing a BA Connect with Journalism course, nonetheless, Journalism is one of my hypothetic career ambitions – among others, because I know not to put all the eggs in the one basket. However, what in the world gave me the idea to try out for the field? Well, quite a few things...
Although I am not doing a BA Connect with Journalism course, nonetheless, Journalism is one of my hypothetic career ambitions – among others, because I know not to put all the eggs in the one basket. However, what in the world gave me the idea to try out for the field? Well, quite a few things...
Whether it was because I may have had some talent, or because my Mam was trying to build me up to it, I did have somewhat of a knack for writing when I was a child. I used to write silly short stories, and even won a couple of minor competitions. That probably had something to do with my obsessive reading habit – which has shaped many of my interests.
However, I soon stopped writing, once I got to Secondary School – it was akin to when, as a child, you used to draw half-decent things, but then it just goes one day, and you are reduced to drawing stick figures.
At the time, it did leave me in a bit of a conundrum – I had no idea if I had any talents. I read quite a lot, and had an interest in History and Current Affairs. However, what good was that? No-one is really interested to talk about those things, most of the careers that I could think of required a good degree of Irish or Maths – neither of which I was good at.
Umm, Tomás, what in the world has this got to do with letters? Ah, whist, don’t be so impatient, I’ll be getting to that!
Strangely enough, my parents tried to get me into watching the news and reading the papers once I entered my teenage years, and so by the time I was in 3rd/5th year (I skipped Transition Year), I was a lot more interested in news than my parents were! I did go onto online political chat forums, just because I couldn’t find any other outlet for my own ideas. However, I soon found it unfulfilling, and wanted to find another outlet.
And this is where letters come into the mix. I noticed the letter columns in the newspapers for a while, and had tried to write into them now and again, without any success. However, I then wrote a letter into my local paper – the only local paper in the county – “The Leitrim Observer”. So, basically, it's the mainstream newspaper with the smallest possible niche – covering local stories from the smallest county in Ireland. And it got published!
It got noticed by the locals – it’s a small, close-knit community in which I hail from, much like many people in NUI Galway would know of, and they obviously knew who this “Tomás M. Creamer” was. And the success encouraged me to write in more letters. Most of the original letters were about local government – this was at the time when reforms to local government were been proposed – and when I realised that this soon boxed me into a niche, I started to write about other stuff.
Originally, they were letters in the literal sense of the word – the internet was abdominal at the time – in that I typed them up, printed them out, and posted them. Of course, I then soon figured out how to email them, which saved a lot of money!
I then tried to send letters to other, more national papers – and I’ve actually had some success on that front, especially in the Irish Times, where I got around seven letters published altogether. I didn’t try other papers as much, and although I’ve heard one person saying that they saw a letter of mine in the Irish Independent, I never saw it, because I don’t regularly buy that paper, and their website doesn’t include published letters, which is annoying.
So, by the time I came to NUI Galway, and asked if I could try and write a couple of articles for SIN, the Student Newspaper, I already had a decent bit of practise from the letters, and I gained some confidence in my ability to write. Because of this, I’ll never underestimate the importance of letters!
However, I soon stopped writing, once I got to Secondary School – it was akin to when, as a child, you used to draw half-decent things, but then it just goes one day, and you are reduced to drawing stick figures.
At the time, it did leave me in a bit of a conundrum – I had no idea if I had any talents. I read quite a lot, and had an interest in History and Current Affairs. However, what good was that? No-one is really interested to talk about those things, most of the careers that I could think of required a good degree of Irish or Maths – neither of which I was good at.
Umm, Tomás, what in the world has this got to do with letters? Ah, whist, don’t be so impatient, I’ll be getting to that!
Strangely enough, my parents tried to get me into watching the news and reading the papers once I entered my teenage years, and so by the time I was in 3rd/5th year (I skipped Transition Year), I was a lot more interested in news than my parents were! I did go onto online political chat forums, just because I couldn’t find any other outlet for my own ideas. However, I soon found it unfulfilling, and wanted to find another outlet.
And this is where letters come into the mix. I noticed the letter columns in the newspapers for a while, and had tried to write into them now and again, without any success. However, I then wrote a letter into my local paper – the only local paper in the county – “The Leitrim Observer”. So, basically, it's the mainstream newspaper with the smallest possible niche – covering local stories from the smallest county in Ireland. And it got published!
It got noticed by the locals – it’s a small, close-knit community in which I hail from, much like many people in NUI Galway would know of, and they obviously knew who this “Tomás M. Creamer” was. And the success encouraged me to write in more letters. Most of the original letters were about local government – this was at the time when reforms to local government were been proposed – and when I realised that this soon boxed me into a niche, I started to write about other stuff.
Originally, they were letters in the literal sense of the word – the internet was abdominal at the time – in that I typed them up, printed them out, and posted them. Of course, I then soon figured out how to email them, which saved a lot of money!
I then tried to send letters to other, more national papers – and I’ve actually had some success on that front, especially in the Irish Times, where I got around seven letters published altogether. I didn’t try other papers as much, and although I’ve heard one person saying that they saw a letter of mine in the Irish Independent, I never saw it, because I don’t regularly buy that paper, and their website doesn’t include published letters, which is annoying.
So, by the time I came to NUI Galway, and asked if I could try and write a couple of articles for SIN, the Student Newspaper, I already had a decent bit of practise from the letters, and I gained some confidence in my ability to write. Because of this, I’ll never underestimate the importance of letters!