The News on Thursday, Oct. 16: Dirty White Boy
Posted on | October 16, 2008 | Comments Off
Clayton Littlewood is living the blogger’s dream: He has such a great following on his blog that a publisher approached him to shape his stories about his particular corner of SOHO into a book.
From his window on one of the busiest street corners in the world, Clayton watches the daily parade of fashion queens, prostitutes, gangsters and celebrities that make up the population of this strangest of villages.
His Soho diary is a snapshot of modern London, caught between the ghosts of the past and the uncertainties of the future. The cast of characters range from Sue and Maggie, the girls from the brothel upstairs, to Angela the feisty trannie, to Pam the Fag Lady, begging for money and cuddles and Chico, the campest queen on Old Compton Street. Not to mention cameo appearances from stars (Kathy Griffin, Janice Dickinson and Graham Norton).
And amidst all this madness occurs one of the strangest and most touching love stories you will ever read.
Clayton will be our “virtual guest” tonight at Blog On! Writing for the Web class at The Florida Center for the Literary Arts. I had the pleasure of prepping him on Tuesday morning via Skype.
Now that you’ve published your blog into a book, what’s happening?
I’ll have a column in the free London paper. And I’m getting paid for it! On Friday, they phoned up (book just came out last week) and said they wanted to give out my mobile number to Elton John. I said, “Sure,” and he called and invited me to dinner! I couldn’t sleep all weekend.
Did you get approached by the book publisher or did you pitch them?
They approached me. One of my readers was a respected author and I knew he was reading my stuff because he would pop into the shop. One day he told me, “We’ve been reading your stuff for a while and you’ve got readers from all over the world.”
I worked with an editor to shape the blog into the book – I had already written 70,000 words. Now I’m writing a second book, which is different because marketing and commercial responsibility comes into it.
Why did you choose Myspace as your blog platform? Did you consider using a blog platform like Wordpress or Blogger?
I never started off with intention of blogging. This was before Facebook started. I was just checking out the Myspace buzz. I didn’t start until after 6 months creating the account. Rather than having my own web site…there was no way to find me…whereas you build up a network of like-minded people: same books, same humor…you’ve already got a readership there if you want it. You can send out a bulletin, people subscribe and as soon as you write something they can read it. Facebook is not conducive to blogging. I started in 2006, and there’s a lot of rubbish on Myspace, but sometimes I come across something that’s interesting. You should never look at writing to making money. That should never be the deciding factor. Or that you want to be famous. You should be posting things that you want to write – people respond to honest writing. But you do have to consider your angle if you want to be serious. A lot of people use blogging to rant – you get sick of that.
Were you afraid you would get sued if you published things about real people?
I write things about interesting people, but nothing scathing. I would be specific in the way I described them. First names only, no addresses, phone numbers, no details. I do recommend a simple name change.
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