what's your trade?

I'm at the part of my course where I'm looking at trade publications.  In some ways it seems daunting, an uncertain territory.  But as I research the various 'trades' available and specialist publications, possibilities soon start niggling. There are magazines about tea and tea rooms, for example (the thought of which makes me hanker after a good cuppa). Writing magazines themselves are trade publications, of course.  Writing about writing: now that does sound appealing.

I'm starting to get into the idea of reading a short news item and researching it further, leading to an in depth feature. It's all about finding springboards, triggers. And the amount of people in our lives...how many professions are we actually in contact with and not realise it?  Friends are very willing to help - both with information and magazines themselves.  Many of my fellow students don't know where to get hold of magazines and which to buy, to which I say ask your friends. Random magazines will soon be helpfully passed on to you and open up a whole arena of possibilities and potential.

The challenge is to put the potential into practice, and not experience that 'bottle neck' of ideas where you end up choked with possibilities, unable to put pen to paper.

That's where an 'ideas list' comes in.....