I’m In Print!!!!……

Ever since I discovered I had the amazing talent of putting words together and making them barely legible, it has been a dream of mine to find myself within a written publication.

Well, that dream finally came true today.

Some of you fellow bloggers may know of a website called The Blog Paper. If you haven’t heard of it, then allow me to give you the skinny.

Here in London, we used to have a collection of free newspapers that were handed out every evening by strange looking people whose sole aim, apart from handing you free papers, was to get in your way as you tried to get home from work, and thus made you so angry that you wanted to roll up two copies of said newspapers and then insert them slowly into their eye sockets due to the fact that they had made you missed your train for the umpteenth time.

These papers died a death sometime last year. So that left a rather large amount of printing presses just sitting idly by, not really doing anything at all. So some rather enterprising folk came up with a novel idea. A user submitted newspaper. You contribute the articles to the website, and the readers of said website voted on what should be printed in the monthly paper.

I submitted my blog article that I wrote about porn as a sort of “Let’s see what happens” kind of thing and awaited the outcome. I did consider posting on here asking for votes, but a part of me wanted to see if the writing would stand up on its own (or at least stagger around half cut like a Glaswegian drunk), so I left it be and waited.

I started to get a few votes here and there, and then things started to go better and better. Better than I could have ever hoped for to be honest. If you look on the website under highest rated articles, I am currently at the top.

I got printed today.

I am very happy.

Very happy indeed.

I went down to one of the stations that the paper was being handed out at to pick myself up a copy. Sadly I think I must have missed them, as the only papers being handed out by the time I got there was the Evening Standard. I must admit to being a tad deflated as I was so excited about holding something I had written in my own hands, but then I saw it, a copy of The Blog Paper lying dropped in the gutter (and yes, the delicious irony was not lost on me). With happy thoughts, I picked it up and flicked through the pages until I saw my article.

My article.

It was my words with my name attached to it. And people could read it.

I know that what I put up on here is happily accessible to anyone who stumbles across it (and god bless you all for doing so), but there is something about the printed word that I find so amazing that having them replicated on a flickering PC screen really can’t do them justice.

This is seriously a big thing for me, even if for others it may seem small.

Coming home I had a bit of an odd experience. I was sitting on the train to Shenfield opposite a rather nice lady with glasses. About halfway through the journey she pulled out a copy of The Blog Paper and began to read it.

Immediately my eyes were drawn to the paper as I stared at her intently, trying to gauge where she was up to in the pages. Was she at my article yet? Was I actually going to have it critiqued in front of me, with her totally unaware that the author was sitting right opposite her?

Suddenly she looked up and saw me staring. I then realized that to her eyes a slightly desperate looking beardy bloke was staring in growing excitement at her. I have never actually seen my presence cause a woman to suddenly look terrified. It wasn’t very nice. I wanted to quickly flick through the pages and point out my article, shouting “I WROTE THAT! THAT WAS ME! THAT'S ALL I’M LOOKING AT! PLEASE DON’T FEAR ME!”

But I didn’t. I just got up at my stop, glancing down to see that she was about three pages away from my piece. Perhaps it was for the best? She might not have even smiled once, and that would have killed me.

So very nice lady with the glasses, if by reading my article you have ended up here, then you may remember the strange bloke sitting in front of you staring in your direction like he had just seen a baby elephant hatch out of your head. That was me. I’m so sorry if I freaked you out. I wasn’t trying to sex you up or anything. I was just happy to see what you were reading.

If anyone is reading this and did vote for my article, can I just say a massive thank you from the bottom of my heart. It has really meant something to achieve this. I think only anybody who writes can fully understand what it means.

It’s brilliant. So thank you.

If anyone wants to have a look at the article, you can find it here. I am on page 14.

My article.

Yes!!!