Dear Bee,
My problem is quite personal. I have recently started writing an advice column and I was wondering if you have any tips on how to encourage people to write in? A lot of my friends said they would but haven’t. I just need something to get the ball rolling. I have so much advice to give and just need the opportunity to share.
Please help.
Polly Pinkleton.
Dear Polly,
Well, this IS a first-an advice columnist writing in to an advice columnist! They say doctors make terrible patients (perhaps because they have little patience), so I do hope that advice givers make excellent advice takers.
When I first started scribbling in this very space, lo these many weeks ago, leaving aside my initial optimism regarding the scores of missives that would soon be filling my box, I too suffered from a dearth of querents. In those early days it often seemed I answered more letters to pets than people. I was hard done by, yet reluctant to burden those close to me with my pleas for help, despite how very much having a successful column meant to me. Fortunately, as the weeks wore on into months….
You know what? F*** it! Polly-I have sat here staring at that blinking cursor for twenty minutes trying to finish the sentence. And you know what? There is no GD end to that sentence because no one cares about me and my stupid column and I am destined to spend my days alone and miserable having tea parties with my dog until one day I pass from the earth and she eats my fingers. Run from this cruel fate Polly, run like the wind! Dig ditches, mine for coal, clean sewers, pursue any other career at all, any save that of the unwanted advice columnist. *sobs*
Bee
Do you have a problem that only Bee can help with? Why not email bee@newsnibbles.co.uk
